"Radiocarbon dating technology emerged in 1949 as a method to calculate the relative date of an object from the past How is the relative age of an object determined using radiocarbon dating? in 1912 the Piltdown Man was"found" and declared the missing link. in 1950 , radiocarbon dating analysis caused a revision of the claim that the Piltdown Man was the missing link between ape and man. What did radiocarbon dating prove about Piltdown Man?"
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Carbon dating measures the amount of radioactive decay of carbon 14 in a sample (carbon 14 is an unstable radioactive isotope of carbon). You can determine how old something is by determining the amount of carbon in a sample at the time of analysis and the amount of carbon 14 in the sample at the start of decay (which is assumed to be the level of carbon in the atmosphere). You can look up the equation anywhere.
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Radiocarbon is created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation hitting nitrogen atoms. This creates radioactive carbon C14 and it happens all the time. These Carbon14 atoms are instable, are radioactive, after a while they break apart releasing an electron (beta-ray) and an antineutrino and thereby turn into a nitrogen atom N14. This also happens all the time, so that the ratio of carbon 14 to the stable carbon isotopes C12 and C13 in the atmosphere stays the same over many thousand years.
This "after a while" for a certain choosen C14 atom will never get any more precise. But if you look at a few hundred or a few thousand C14 atoms you will see that exactly half of them fall apart (decay) after 5730 years. (5730 years is the half-life-time of C14)
Now we have the possibility to count how many C14 and how many C13 and C12 atoms there are in a given pile of carbon atoms.
Living organisms take carbon mainly from the atmosphere by breathing. So while the organism is living it inhales carbon in form of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon inside the organism has the same ratio of C14 to C12 as the atmosphere. When the organism dies it stops taking carbon from the atmosphere. So the C14 inside the dead organism keeps decaying, the C12 stays stable, and no new C14 is supplied. This means the ratio of C12 to C14 changes over the years. And by comparing the ratio you can quite precisly determinate the time the organism stopped breathing. Until after about 50000 years there is not enough C14 left to measure.
This "after a while" for a certain choosen C14 atom will never get any more precise. But if you look at a few hundred or a few thousand C14 atoms you will see that exactly half of them fall apart (decay) after 5730 years. (5730 years is the half-life-time of C14)
Now we have the possibility to count how many C14 and how many C13 and C12 atoms there are in a given pile of carbon atoms.
Living organisms take carbon mainly from the atmosphere by breathing. So while the organism is living it inhales carbon in form of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon inside the organism has the same ratio of C14 to C12 as the atmosphere. When the organism dies it stops taking carbon from the atmosphere. So the C14 inside the dead organism keeps decaying, the C12 stays stable, and no new C14 is supplied. This means the ratio of C12 to C14 changes over the years. And by comparing the ratio you can quite precisly determinate the time the organism stopped breathing. Until after about 50000 years there is not enough C14 left to measure.