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Radiocarbon Dating Comprehension Questions

The section titles below are the names of sections in the WikiJournal of Science article Radiocarbon Dating, and the questions in each section apply to the matching section of the article.

Background
The Principles section gives two equivalent equations for the decay of a radioactive isotope, one giving N, the number of atoms left after time t, the other giving t in terms of N and N0, with the mean-life T as a constant. The section then explains that half-life t1/2 is a more familiar concept.


 * Why is mean-life used here rather than the more familiar half-life?