Radiocarbon carbon sampling

Graphite produces the large beam currents desirable in electrostatic accelerator dating of radiocarbon. However, samples to be dated can be converted to other forms of carbon with less effort, and still provide satisfactory results. 

There have recently been significant advances in the technique of carbon 14 measurements, which have permitted the determination of the concentration ratio C14/C12 in samples of small size. Two developments have occurred the first is an entirely new mass-spectrometric separation of Cl4 and Cl2 ions and their subsequent estimation by counting [1-8]1, while the second is simply the extension of conventional proportional counter operation to very small size carbon samples [9]. The first method is very fast, precise, and capable of treating samples of even submilligram size, but requires an expensive installation. The second method is slow (counting times of two months or more are necessary), can probably be made sufficiently precise to handle most problems, works down to sample sizes of 10 mg carbon, and is relatively inexpensive, especially to install in already-existing radiocarbon laboratories. 

I. Natural Radiocarbon—For Samples Collected Prior to 1950, or Assumed to Contain No Bomb Radiocarbon. For samples not complicated by the presence of bomb 14C, the ratio of 14C/12C measured in a sample represents the rate of decomposition relative to the rate of radiodecay of 14C. This treatment is most useful for very old C found in soils. For a homogeneous carbon-containing reservoir, i, with input rate Iu first-order decomposition constant kh and carbon content C the change in stock over time (balance of inputs and outputs) is... 

The shroud has been examined for authenticity on a number of occasions. Traditional radiocarbon dating could not be used because a large sample of the cloth would have been destroyed. With the advent of AMS dating, however, three laboratories at Arizona, Oxford, and Zurich were invited in 1987 by the Archbishop of Turin to date samples of the shroud. A small sDip of cloth was removed from one side and divided into three postage stamp-size pieces. One piece of the shroud, along with three control samples of different dates, was given to each lab. At two of the laboratories the scientists did not know which of the four carbon samples came from the shroud itself. 

A wooden object from an archeological site is subjected to radiocarbon dating. The activity due toi-t is measured to be 11.6 disintegrations per second. The activity of a carbon sample of equal mass from fresh wood is 15.2 disintegrations per second. The half-life of is 5715 yr. What is the age of the archeological sample ... 

Bischoff JL, Fitzpatrick JA (1991) U-series dating of impure carbonates An isochron technique using total-sample dissolution. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 55 543-554 Broecker WS, Olson EA, Orr PC (1960) Radiocarbon measurements and annual rings in cave formations. Nature 185 93-94... 

FIGURE 61 The decay of radiocarbon. Radiocarbon is a radioactive isotope whose half-life is 5730 + 40 years. This means that half of the original amount of radiocarbon in any carbon-containing sample will have disintegrated after 5730 years. Half of the remaining radiocarbon will have disintegrated after 11,400 years, and so forth. After about 50,000 years the amount of radiocarbon remaining in any sample is so small that older remains cannot be dated reliably. 

A more recently developed technique, known as the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating technique, based on counting, in a mass spectrometer, the relative amount of radiocarbon to stable carbon isotopes in a sample (see Textbox 10). 

A mass of evidence seems to confirm that the mixing rate of radiocarbon in the atmosphere is rapid, and that with respect to its radiocarbon content the atmosphere can be considered as a homogeneous entirety. The contamination of samples with matter from an extraneous source can nevertheless invalidate this assumption. Two types of contamination can be differentiated physicochemical contamination and mechanical intrusion. There are two forms of physicochemical contamination. One is due to the dilution of the concentration of radiocarbon in the atmosphere by very old carbon, practically depleted of radiocarbon, released by the combustion of fossil fuel, such as coal and oil. The other is by the contamination with radiocarbon produced by nuclear bomb tests during the 1950s and later in the twentieth century. The uncertainties introduced by these forms of contamination complicate the interpretation of data obtained by the radiocarbon dating method and restrict its accuracy and the effective time range of dating. 

Most bone is, at present, dated by radiocarbon dating the carbon-containing components of the bone (see Textbox 52). Relatively large samples are... 

In this way, it is possible to reach an extremely high selective sensitivity down to 1 part in 1015, which in 14C dating corresponds to being able to date samples about 50 000 years old. Moreover, modern systems can measure isotopic ratios in modern carbon, both C/ C and C/ C, with an ultimate precision as good as 2%o and l%o, respectively. The former value corresponds to determining the conventional radiocarbon age with an absolute error, smaller than in the past, better than 20 years, while the l%o precision for the 13C/12C allows an adequate correction for isotopic fractionation effects. Even in routine measurements, at least in the case of historical samples, a precision of 5%o in the 14C/12C measured value is standard, corresponding to an uncertainty in the radiocarbon age of 40 years.[27]... 

The most abundant isotope of carbon has a mass of 12 atomic mass units, 12C. A less abundant stable isotope is 13C. And much less abundant is the radioactive isotope t4C, also called radiocarbon. It is convenient to express the abundances of these rare isotopes in terms of ratios of the number of atoms of the rare isotope in a sample to the number of atoms of the abundant isotope. We call this ratio r, generally a very small number. To arrive at numbers of convenient magnitude, it is conventional to express the ratio in terms of the departure of r from the ratio in a standard, which I call. v, and to express this departure in parts per thousand of s. Thus the standard delta notation is... 

All of the above particulate investigations were based on mini-radiocarbon measurement techniques, with sample masses typically in the range of 5-10 mg-carbon. This constituted a major advantage, because it was practicable to select special samples (given region, source impact, sediment depth) and to further subject such samples to physical (size) or chemical separation before 14C measurement. This type of "serial selectivity" provides maximum information content about the samples and in fact it is essential when information is sought for the sources or atmospheric distributions of pure chemical species, such as methane or elemental carbon. 

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