What is radiocarbon dating?
Q: What is radiocarbon dating?
A: Radiocarbon dating, also known as the C14 dating method, is a way of telling how old an object is. It is a type of radiometric dating that uses the radioactive isotope carbon-14 to determine the age of substances that contain carbon.
Q: How does it work?
A: The method works by measuring the amount of radioactive isotope carbon-14 in organic matter. As long as something is alive, it will be exchanging carbon-14 with its environment, but once it dies this exchange stops. By measuring the amount of 14C in an object and comparing it to atmospheric levels, scientists can estimate its age up to 60,000 years old.
Q: Who developed this method?
A: The method was developed by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1949. In 1960 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.
Q: How accurate is radiocarbon dating?
A: Generally speaking, radiocarbon dates are considered accurate up to about 20,000 years old when compared with dendrochronology (tree ring analysis). For more precise results calibration curves are used to compensate for variations in atmospheric levels over time and location.
Q: What did Willard Libby use to demonstrate accuracy? A: To demonstrate accuracy Willard Libby estimated the age of wood from an ancient Egyptian royal barge whose age was already known from historical documents.
Q: What kind of radiation does radiocarbon dating use?
A: Radiocarbon dating uses radiation from radioactive isotopes such as carbon-14 which has a half life (time taken to reduce radioactivity by half) of 5,730 years.
