Message from @A$AP Chloee
Discord ID: 603633819572240420
Lol
One of the neutrons turns into an electron
Pretty sure
Maybe proton
Alright
And if we have some sort of volcanic eruption, the lava is illiquid
Liquid**
That means that any argon 40 in there, since it’s low reactivity, is free to move out of the lava
Perhaps an error in the wikipedia article then, it says Ca-40
It’s probably an error
@PhumoZTYPE anyway
Because of this, we know that any argon 40 in the rock must have came from the parent element
Which is K-40
Yup
Good
Now, we can get to the fun part
It would be easier if I could send pictures
Yeah I guess
We can take our original equation, N_0 times e^-kt = N(t)
Checked, it's Ca-40 from beta decay of K-40
K-40 to Ar-40 is by electron capture
It’s irrelevant to this discussion though
All we care about is Argon 40
I shall keep my mouth shut then
Yeah
I’m listening
We can plug in 1.25B to our equation for t
And set it equal to 1/2 N(t)
Why lol
Because in 1.25 billion years, we’ll have half the amount of K-40
Oh yess
N(t) is the amount of K-40
So we have 1/2 N_0=N_0 e^-k*1.25B
But isn’t that based on the assumption that potassium 40 is like that
Why?
It has been measured
No no
We don’t even need to measure it
We can actually calculate the initial amount