Dating With the Carbon-14 Method

The element carbon has four isotopes, according to Table 39.5. Table 39.5 The isotopes of carbon 

Half-life 20.3 mill Stable Stable 5730 years 

Willard Frank Libby (1908-1980) was a professor at the University of CaHfomia from 1959 and responsible for its Geophysical Institution from 1962 to 1976. He saw the possibility in the C decay and developed a workable technique for age determination, a method that has great utility for dating of, above all, archeological finds. For this he got the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1960. 

The method works in the following way. The intensity of the P-radiation from a sample (the total carbon content of which is known) is determined. The sample ma- 

Brownlow, Geochemistry, 2 edn., Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New jersey, 1996 

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