How is carbon-14 used in radiocarbon dating?

Carbon fourteen dating measures the age of once-living carbon-containing materials by comparing how much radioactive carbon fourteen remains to the amount expected in a living organism.

Think of living things as filling up a balloon with a mix of regular carbon and a tiny bit of radioactive carbon fourteen while they are alive. When the organism dies the supply stops and the carbon fourteen slowly disappears because it decays into nitrogen; scientists know how fast that happens, which is called the decay rate. By measuring the remaining carbon fourteen in a sample and comparing it to the original expected amount, researchers can calculate how many years have passed since the organism stopped exchanging carbon with the atmosphere. This method works best for things less than about fifty thousand years old because carbon fourteen becomes very scarce after a long time and hard to measure.

Students often assume carbon fourteen dating gives an exact calendar year for very old fossils, but it only gives an estimate with possible errors; calibrations and sample context are needed to improve accuracy. Another common mistake is ignoring contamination from newer or older carbon, which can make a sample seem younger or older than it really is; careful cleaning and selecting uncontaminated material helps prevent that. People sometimes try to date rocks or materials that never contained organic carbon, which cannot be dated with carbon fourteen; use other dating methods for those materials.

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Carbon-14 Radiocarbon Dating Basics

1. Living organisms absorb atmospheric carbon
2. Carbon-14 decays after death
3. Measure remaining carbon-14 in sample
4. Compare to original expected amount
5. Calculate years since carbon exchange stopped
6. Best for materials under 50000 years

Common Radiocarbon Dating Mistakes

1. Treating dates as exact calendar years
2. Sample contamination skewing results
3. Dating non-organic materials

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