Use+of+Carbon-14

Use of Carbon-14 In geology, archaeology, and paleontology, a useful tool to determine the age of ancient rocks or fossils is a radioisotope called Carbon-14. Carbon-14 is formed at the troposphere and stratosphere, at an altitude of 9 km to 15 km, when nitrogen absorbs thermal neutrons. Its occurrence in nature is in trace amounts. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730±40 years, which means that after that amount of time, it will start to decay to the half of the initial concentration. It is used to estimate the ages of organic remnants from archaeological locations. During photosynthesis, plants also incorporate an amount of carbon-14, which equals approximately the level of this isotope in the atmosphere. When plants are consumed by animals or humans, the fraction of carbon-14 declines at a fixed exponential rate due to the radioactive decay of carbon-14; then, the age of the sample is estimated by making a comparison between the remaining Carbon-14 fraction of a sample to the expected of the atmosphere. Source: [], [] media type="youtube" key="udkQwW6aLik?fs=1" height="385" width="640"

Alvaro Campos