Given the age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years, carbon-14 can only be used to date very recent materials. Carbon-14 has a very short half-life of 5,730 years and can only be used to date materials up to approximately 70,000 years. When an animal stops eating or a plant stops photosyn- thesizing, the radioactive carbon starts to decay without being replaced, which can be easily measured. You currently have Carbon-14 in your body that is decaying to Nitrogen-14 (daughter isotope), but you replace it whenever you eat. This isotope is found naturally in small amounts in the atmosphere within CO2 and is incorporated into plants during photosynthesis and then filters throughout the food chain.
Carbon-14 (parent isotope) is found in organic material including bone, tissue, plants, and fiber. Each of these systems have different uses within geology in that they require different materials and can date objects within specific time frames.Ĭarbon-14 dating is of limited use within geology, but is still the system that is familiar to most people.
There are several different radiometric isotopes that are commonly used in absolute dating. You may recreate the graph by hand, using Excel or another plotting program, or you can print out the copy attached here. Make sure you connect the data points on the graph by drawing in the decay curve. Complete the following chart by calculating the amount of parent isotope remaining for all of the given half-lives, then plot your findings on the graph (Figure 1.13).
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