When fossils or minerals certain unstable elements are sometimes locked into them. The proportion of these unstable elements gradually decreases over time as they decay into other materials in a predictable way. Scientist use the rate at which such unstable elements decay to determine when fossils or minerals formed. The technique described above is known as

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Physics

Esther Walton

25 February, 21:20

When fossils or minerals certain unstable elements are sometimes locked into them. The proportion of these unstable elements gradually decreases over time as they decay into other materials in a predictable way. Scientist use the rate at which such unstable elements decay to determine when fossils or minerals formed. The technique described above is known as

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Adrienne · Answer 1

Carbon Dating (most likely, might also be very wrong)

Presuming the rate of production of carbon-14 to be constant, the activity of a sample can be directly compared to the equilibrium activity of living matter and the age calculated. Various tests of reliability have confirmed the value of carbon data, and many examples provide an interesting range of application.

Carbon-14 decays with a halflife of about 5730 years by the emission of an electron of energy 0.016 MeV. This changes the atomic number of the nucleus to 7, producing a nucleus of nitrogen-14. At equilibrium with the atmosphere, a gram of carbon shows an activity of about 15 decays per minute.

The low activity of the carbon-14 limits age determinations to the order of 50,000 years by counting techniques. That can be extended to perhaps 100,000 years by accelerator techniques for counting the carbon-14 concentration.