How does coabon dating work?

Question

I hear things millions of years old being dated by 'carbon dating' -fossils, skeletons, stones, rocks, etc.. Who does that work? What is te procedure?

Answer 1

Carbon dating cannot reliably date anything older than about 50,000 years and it cannot date stone or anything that was not once alive. It works by chemically measuring the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the thing to be dated. Carbon-14 is constantly being created out of carbon-12 high in the atmosphere when cosmic rays hit carbon-12 atoms in the CO2 in the air. It slowly changes back into carbon-12 over a few thousand years, but the atmosphere is in equilibrium, where the rate at which it is created matches the rate at which it decays, so there is a fixed ratio always existing in the air. Living things take the carbon of both kinds from the air and incorporate it into their bodies. When they die, no new carbon is added from the atmosphere and the carbon-14 still in the dead body slowly changes back to carbon-12. By measuring how much carbon-14 is left you can calculate how long it has been dead.

Answer 2

Carbon dating uses a radioactive for of carbon called carbon-14. Carbon as you should know usually has 12 electrons, but carbon-14 has 14 as its name implies. The science of it is that radioactive material has what is called a half life. A half life is the time that it takes for the material to lose half of its radioactivity, so the time that half of the carbon-14 would become carbon-12. Carbon-14's half life is 5730 years. Knowing this fact, scientists can figure out the age of an object by the amount of carbon-14 left in the object. This can only be used for objects that are less than 100,000 years old, past that other radioactive elements' halflifes are used. The issue today, is that scientist assume that the Carbon-14 content of material is the same as another object they have correctly idenitified for that period, which isn't necessarily the case.

Answer 3

Carbon dateing works bylooking for a specific kind of carbon which is called Carbon- 14 which could tell the age of anything. Archealogist could do these things. But mostly lab technicans do these things... everything has carbon atoms. especially carbon 14 which we have only .88% in our system. but its enough to tell how old we are. But dont forget carbon 14 wouldnt always be there. for every element has a 1/2 life. Carbon- 14 has a 1/2 life exectantly a 5,730 years until it breaks down in to 1/2 the amount it has.. and everytime 5,730 goes by the .88% reduces into .44% and .22% and then .11% and then .o55% teh so on and so forth just keep on cutting it in half until it reaches 0 but that will be a very long time until it totally obliterates....

Answer 4

Carbon dating is a variety of radioactive dating which is applicable only to matter which was once living and presumed to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere, taking in carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis.

Cosmic ray protons blast nuclei in the upper atmosphere, producing neutrons which in turn bombard nitrogen, the major constituent of the atmosphere . This neutron bombardment produces the radioactive isotope carbon-14. The radioactive carbon-14 combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and is incorporated into the cycle of living things.

The carbon-14 forms at a rate which appears to be constant, so that by measuring the radioactive emissions from once-living matter and comparing its activity with the equilibrium level of living things, a measurement of the time elapsed can be made.

It's pretty technical but, there you go hun

Answer 5

it works because there is carbon present in all living things. when the living thing then dies, slowly the carbon decays [edit-thanks Slippery_Jim]. depending on how old the thing is dead, there'll be a certain amount of carbon left in it

[Edit-by the way nate, 14 is the mass number and since carbon has 6 protons, c-14 has 8 neutrons, not 14 (14-6=8)]

Answer 6

Nothing to do with carbon "seeping out" -but the regular decay of C14. This can be measured and gives a clock like measurement of how long ago the animal died.

Answer 7

It's a process where they determine the amount of Carbon 14 in the object....
check out this site:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm

Answer 8

heey i think i know bout this.....carbon dating was also done to anscient harappa and mohenjodaro.......it is a kind of device......which is used to determine the date of its origin....