# An example of radiocarbon dating

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Once an organism dies, it stops taking in carbon-14.The carbon-14 it contained at the time of death decays over a long period of time, and the radioactivity of the material decreases.It works as follows: Historical sources or coins with a known date can sometimes be linked with archaeological artefacts of specific types.These artefact types may again be linked with other artefacts types, e.g. By studying how such artefact types appear together, it is possible to build up large artefacts chronologies.

Because we are measuring the abundance of two isotopes of carbon, and because isotopes of the same element will be chemically identical, no ordinary process can preferentially remove C is going to be small enough to begin with, being only 0.0000000001% of atmospheric carbon, and then as the decay process progresses it's going to get smaller and smaller. From this science, we are able to approximate the date at which the organism were living on Earth.Radiocarbon dating is used in many fields to learn information about the past conditions of organisms and the environments present on Earth.The currently accepted value for the half-life of will remain; a quarter will remain after 11,460 years; an eighth after 17,190 years; and so on.The equation relating rate constant to half-life for first order kinetics is $k = \dfrac \label$ so the rate constant is then $k = \dfrac = 1.21 \times 10^ \text^ \label$ and Equation $$\ref$$ can be rewritten as $N_t= N_o e^ \label$ or $t = \left(\dfrac \right) t_ = 8267 \ln \dfrac = 19035 \log_ \dfrac \;\;\; (\text) \label$ The sample is assumed to have originally had the same (rate of decay) of d/min.g (where d = disintegration).