How is carbon dating done?

Answer 1

Here's some experts from an awesome article that I found.
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"Carbon-14 dating is a way of determining the age of certain archeological artifacts of a biological origin up to about 50,000 years old. It is used in dating things such as bone, cloth, wood and plant fibers that were created in the relatively recent past by human activities.
Cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every person is hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.
The carbon-14 atoms that cosmic rays create combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which plants absorb naturally and incorporate into plant fibers by photosynthesis. Animals and people eat plants and take in carbon-14 as well. The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12) to carbon-14 in the air and in all living things at any given time is nearly constant. Maybe one in a trillion carbon atoms are carbon-14. The carbon-14 atoms are always decaying, but they are being replaced by new carbon-14 atoms at a constant rate. At this moment, your body has a certain percentage of carbon-14 atoms in it, and all living plants and animals have the same percentage.
As soon as a living organism dies, it stops taking in new carbon. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. The carbon-14 decays with its half-life of 5,700 years, while the amount of carbon-12 remains constant in the sample. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely.

A formula to calculate how old a sample is by carbon-14 dating is:

t = [ ln (Nf/No) / (-0.693) ] x t1/2

where ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life of carbon-14 (5,700 years).

So, if you had a fossil that had 10 percent carbon-14 compared to a living sample, then that fossil would be:

t = [ ln (0.10) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years

t = [ (-2.303) / (-0.693) ] x 5,700 years

t = [ 3.323 ] x 5,700 years

t = 18,940 years old

Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years).

The use of various radioisotopes allows the dating of biological and geological samples with a high degree of accuracy. However, radioisotope dating may not work so well in the future. Anything that dies after the 1940s, when Nuclear bombs, nuclear reactors and open-air nuclear tests started changing things, will be harder to date precisely."
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I hope this helps you! I don't really know much about the process myself, so I hope this helped you! Here's the entire article if you would like to read it. http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-142.htm Again, hope I helped! :)

Answer 2

How Is Carbon Dating Done

Answer 3

radiocarbon dating, also known as Carbon-14 (or C-14) dating, is a type of absolute dating technique used to determine the age of organic material. Introduced in 1947 by Willard F. Libby, C-14 dating was a real breakthrough for scientists, who up to this point, had to rely on relative dating techniques.
Basically, all living things are mostly made of carbon. A small portion of this carbon is in the form of Carbon-14, an unstable radioactive isotope. Once an organism dies, the C-14 in the organism begins to disintegrate. Because it disintegrates at a steady, known rate, scientists can measure the amount of C-14 remaining and use a scientific formula to determine the age of the sample.

The University of Waikato, New Zealand web site offers an in-depth explanation and, for the less scientifically-inclined, a simple summary that's a bit easier to understand. Another good place to start is Yahoo's Archaeometry category, a sub-category of Archaeology that deals with methods of dating artifacts.

While C-14 dating has its limitations, it remains a significant scientific discovery and has been used to date some of the most important archaeological finds, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Iceman, and the controversial Shroud of Turin.

According to British prehistorian Desmond Clark, without Carbon-14 dating "we would still be foundering in a sea of imprecisions sometime bred of inspired guesswork but more often of imaginative speculation." Sounds pretty frightening, doesn't it?

Answer 4

It is a complicated process.It goes like this.
You know that plants produce thier own food by photosynthesis, minerals etc. The plants need minerals from the soil. the soil needs fertility which is aquired by action of many organic bacteria and climatic conditions. the important condition is that of lighting. during lighting nitrogen of the air gets reacted with the soil which becomes fertile by some way[that is another long story] The plant take the nutrients and make their food. the herbivorous eat plants. Then the carnivores eat herbivores and then man gets his food through this. Thus the same material is transported from one person to another and in the transfered material is Carbon 14 which decays at a very slow rate. it is about 12.5%/5700years. [i don't knowwhthere it is 12.5 or 2.5%/5700 years, but higher probality of 12.5%/5700years.] Knowing the amount of Carbon 14 present at this time of the world and the carbon left in an long decayed organism it is calculated how must carbon14 is lost and how much time it had taken.
And you get the result. this is how it is done.

Answer 5

The basic assumption is that there has been same amount of Carbon 14 all along. The Carbon-14 decays at a known rate. You can count the decay of the Carbon-14 in a sample and figure out how much is left, then work backwards to how much there should be (based on that first assumption) and figure out how old it is.

Answer 6

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
How is carbon dating done?

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

it is like any other dating

you call the carbon up, you set up a time

a movie, maybe dinner

carbon never kisses on the first date

(that was probably the stupidest most juvenile thing I have ever typed in Y!Answers, why couldn't I just explain about the isotopes of carbon that decay at known rates and their ratio to other carbon isotopes, it must be one of those days, I do apologize)

Answer 9

every living thing has carbon in it. when it dies the carbon breaks down in a very precise way, called half-lives. each year the amount is reduced by 50%--. the amount of carbon found in the deceased entity tells scientists how long ago the entity lived.

Answer 10

these days carbon can get a date by using the internet