What radiocarbon dating be used on

Radiocarbon dating also referred to as carbon dating or carbon dating is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon , a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was developed in the late s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby , who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in It is based on the fact that radiocarbon 14 C is constantly being created in the atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting 14 C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide , which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis ; animals then acquire 14 C by eating the plants.

This is how carbon dating works: Carbon is a naturally abundant element found in the atmosphere, in the earth, in the oceans, and in every living creature. C is by far the most common isotope, while only about one in a trillion carbon atoms is C C is produced in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen N is altered through the effects of cosmic radiation bombardment a proton is displaced by a neutron effectively changing the nitrogen atom into a carbon isotope. The new isotope is called "radiocarbon" because it is radioactive, though it is not dangerous. It is naturally unstable and so it will spontaneously decay back into N after a period of time. It takes about 5, years for half of a sample of radiocarbon to decay back into nitrogen.

Radiocarbon dating is one of the most widely used scientific dating methods in archaeology and environmental science. It can be applied to most organic materials and spans dates from a few hundred years ago right back to about 50, years ago - about when modern humans were first entering Europe. For radiocarbon dating to be possible, the material must once have been part of a living organism.

A child mummy is found high in the Andes and the archaeologist says the child lived more than 2, years ago. How do scientists know how old an object or human remains are? What methods do they use and how do these methods work? In this article, we will examine the methods by which scientists use radioactivity to determine the age of objects, most notably carbon dating. Carbon dating is a way of determining the age of certain archeological artifacts of a biological origin up to about 50, years old.