Radio Carbon Dating (Earth, choice, pray)

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by pray4me

not to me it hasn't. where do you get carbon 14?

You'll have to ask a chemistry standards company for some.

[Ringer]

Originally Posted by pray4me

not to me it hasn't. where do you get carbon 14?

I very, very carefully got mine from the upper layers of the troposphere

[pray4me]

is that something real or are you making fun of me ringer?

[Ringer]

Originally Posted by pray4me

is that something real or are you making fun of me ringer?

It's one of the places that Carbon-14 is produced.

[pray4me]

is it part of the atmosphere?

[Ringer]

Originally Posted by pray4me

is it part of the atmosphere?

Yes. The highest rate of production is between 30,000 - 50,000 feet of altitute.

[misanthropic_clown]

Howstuffworks has an excellent article on it all if you are feeling a bit bewildered. Howstuffworks "How Carbon-14 Dating Works"


Half life does seem, superficially, a very illogical principle but it is true nonetheless.

[painted wolf]

we get our C14 from eating plants (or animals that eat plants)... plants get it from breathing.
C14 is one of the two common forms of Carbon in the atmosphere. The other is C12 (99% of the carbon is C12).
This is important... C12 and C13 are stable elements, that is they do not decay.

C14 decays into another element Nitrogen 14 (N14). We know this because we can watch it happen.
To measure the date of something you look at the amount you have left and the amount of the by-product N14. Some math later and you get the age.


Example Tritium has a half-life of 10 years.
Say we start out with 100 atoms of tritium
In ten years we will have 50 atoms of tritium and 50 atoms of Helium-3
In ten more years we will have 35 atoms of tritium
In ten more years we will have 17.5
In ten more 8.75
Ten more 4.375
and so on....

so now we look at our thing and look at the amount of Tritium in comparison to H3
so counting the half lives backward we get... 60 years.

Radiocarbon dating is so reliable that we use it to set our watches now.

wa:do

[pray4me]

it seems impossible that everything no matter the length of it's existance has absorbed the same amount of carbon 14. Wouldn't something that died relatively young have much less carbon 14 than something that died older? Can anything (such as pollution) effect the amount of carbon 14 created in the atmosphere and thus effect the amount absorbed by plants?

[Ringer]

Originally Posted by pray4me

it seems impossible that everything no matter the length of it's existance has absorbed the same amount of carbon 14. Wouldn't something that died relatively young have much less carbon 14 than something that died older? Can anything (such as pollution) effect the amount of carbon 14 created in the atmosphere and thus effect the amount absorbed by plants?

Those are the some of the arguements against the accuracy of Carbon 14 dating I think. I have heard things as pollution, the strength of the earth's magnetic field, even the flood described in Genesis that would augment the accuracy of this type of dating. How valid these arguments are I have no idea. This type of dating is still being used today so obviously it can't be that much of an issue.