3 ms·
No, the radioactive decay will follow a (nearly) continuous exponential curve. Half-life is just an arbitrarily chosen point on that curve: the point at which h
by TheCoelacanth 7y ago
No, the radioactive decay will follow a (nearly) continuous exponential curve. Half-life is just an arbitrarily chosen point on that curve: the point at which half of the atoms have decayed. With carbon dating you are basically solving this equation: percent of carbon 14 left = 0.5 ^ (years since death/5,730). If it has been 500 years since death, you would expect 94% of the original carbon 14 to remain.
That said, you generally have error boundaries spanning multiple decades and it measures since time of death (when new carbon stops being integrated into the body) not time of birth, so it would not be useful for this.
- MBCook 7y agoThanks for the details.
- 3JPLW 7y agoNote that you can use tooth enamel, which freezes its carbon at time of development (instead of death). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627335 That said, the error bars are simply too large to do anything reasonable for dates prior to 1955. The difference between 80 years and 110 years is 98.7% vs. 99.0% of the original C14 concentration... and while you may be able to get a very precise measurement of the remaining C14 you also need to very precisely know the baseline from that era to determine the percentage. Thus typical radiocarbon error bars are at least ±60 years.