Carbon-14 Dating In Dating

The discovery of a mysterious artifact can provoke curiosity and theories of many sorts in the individuals that hear of it. Often the artifact can become a legend, as seen in the discovery of the Shroud of Turin. This relic was supposedly the burial cloth of the biblical Jesus Christ, but there is much debate on the validity of this theory. Through advancements in archaeology, insight has been provided regarding methods that can be used to date certain items, such as this cloth. The care that must be taken in using the methods of archaeological dating is essential to the accuracy of the results produced. Many of these archaeological techniques have been discovered and improved over the course of the last hundred years. One of the most famous methods used to date organic, living, and previously living materials is carbon dating. Carbon-14 dating has enlightened archaeologists to a technique that dates materials that are thousands of years old. With this relatively new dating method, archaeologists have been able to date certain artifacts more accurately than ever before. To understand the important impacts this method has had on archaeology, it is essential to understand what Carbon-14 is, how Carbon-14 dating works, how it is calibrated, and how it is measured.

The periodic table of elements contains one hundred eighteen elements (ptable). Each element contains extremely small particles called electrons, neutrons, and protons. Whenever an element has a differing number of neutrons than the standard element, the distinct forms of the element are called isotopes. Carbon-14 is just one isotope of carbon in our atmosphere. Fifteen isotopes of this atom actually exist, but the three kinds that occur most often are Carbon-12, Carbon-13,...

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...h cesium ions and then to focus it into a fast moving beam. The ions that are produced become negative, which helps prevents the confusion of Carbon-14 with Nitrogen-14 since Nitrogen does not have a negative ion. The first magnet is used to select ions with an atomic mass of fourteen. The ions then enter the accelerator. As they travel to the terminal, they are accelerated to an incredible speed so when they collide with the gas molecules, all of the molecular ions are broken up and most of the carbon ions have four electrons removed, turning them into Carbon3+ ions. The second magnet selects ions with the speed expected for the Carbon-14 ion and a filter makes sure their momentum is also right. Finally, the filtered Carbon-14 ions enter the detector where their speed and energy are checked so that the number of Carbon-14 ions in the sample can be counted (Oxford).