Carbon is also useful in other places in science. Carbon can be used to date objects with a process called carbon dating. Carbon dating is one of the main methods used to understand the age of fossils and artifacts. It’s relatively simple. C-14 is a more rare type of carbon isotope. It is produced in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen-14 is altered through cosmic radiation. The carbon isotope created from this is called “radiocarbon” because it’s radioactive. This radioactive isotope is absorbed into the objects, and ground of the area it is near. After a period of time it will decay back into nitrogen-14. It takes about 5730 years for half of the sample of this radiocarbon to decay. The way carbon dating works is that scientists measure the amount of C-14 in whatever it is we want to know the age of. If the amount is half of what it should be then we know the sample is 5730 years old. If the sample has one fourth of the C-14 then it is 11,460 years old. After about 10 half-lives (around 50,000 years), the amount of radiocarbon left in any sample is too small to be measured. This technique is useful for dating anything that died less than 60,000 years ago.

http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/Radiography/Physics/carbondating.htm,

November 7, 2012, 9:01 am