Lab Report: Radiocarbon Dating

The age of the earth has been debated for centuries. Many people believe in evolution that it took billions of years for everything and everyone to form. Others believe that God created the earth in seven days and that the earth is young. Secular scientist and Christian scientist both use different methods for determining how old the earth is. For example, Secular scientist look and use the layers of rocks to help them, while Christian scientist uses the Bible and look at historical data from other cultures to help them. Doesn't looking at archeological data seem more accurate than looking at rocks? If the earth is truly billions of years old, then why is there little sediment on the sea floor? Or how can secular scientist explain finding soft tissue in a fossil if the earth is old? The most logical explanation is that the earth is young. Many people believe something just because people say that it is true, sometimes it is good to investigate for yourself and see if it is good for you.

Radiometric dating is a technique that utilizes unstable isotopes of natural elements. Because these unstable isotopes eventually decay at a constant and singular rate despite any environmental changes such as temperature or moisture changes. The unit used as measurement is a half-life which is the amount of time it takes 50% of the original isotope to decay into the next isotope or daughter isotope. Basically the amount of half-lives is multiplied by the length of the half-life to estimate the age of the object being tested. Every element used has a different half-life and that makes each useful for measuring certain types of material. Some have longer a half-life and thus a longer effective dating range. Potassium-argon dating is useful for dating material that is extremely old. This method is used by geologists to replace relative ages based on rock formation with absolute ages. The dates found from the radiometric technique are accurate because the sources, the individual radioactive isotopes, are unchanging and unaffected by environmental factors. This means that the radiometric data will always be precise unlike relative dating which relies on the theory of uniformitarianism, the theory that geological history is made up of endless and uniform

Until the early 1900's, scientists used several methods of measurement in their efforts to determine the age of the Earth. They studied sedimentation and erosion, stratification (with fossil evidence), measured the salinity of the oceans, and used thermodynamics to determine loss of heat since the Earth's beginning. Each of these approaches yielded estimates that the Earth was anywhere from 24 to 100 million years old.

Encyclopaedia Britannica also states that it is “proved to be a versatile technique of dating fossils and archaeological specimens from 500 to 50,000 years old” (1998). This method of age determination is dependent upon the decay of nitrogen and radiocarbon (Carbon-14) (Encyclopaediea Britannica, 1998; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2011). Carbon-14 is continually formed in nature by the interaction of neutrons with nitrogen-14 in the Earth’s atmosphere (Encyclopaediea Britannica, 1998; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2011) and all living things exchange the gas carbon-14 with the atmosphere surrounding them. The amount of carbon-14 exchanged into the living organism is perfectly balanced with its surroundings, but when an organism dies, they stop taking in the gas and that equilibrium is damaged. Because Carbon-14 slowly decays at a known rate called its “half-life” in a dead organism, scientists can figure out how long ago it had stopped exchanging carbon with its atmosphere. Thus, its age can be determined by measuring the amount of Carbon-14 in a sample (Hirst, 2017; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2017; Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit Research Laboratory for Archaeology, n.d.; Earthsky, 2017; Cram, 1993). With the utilisation of Radiocarbon Dating, scientists have been able to discover that Lindow

To compute the 90% prediction interval for all trading days during the study period, the formula ( , ) can be used. Referring to the question equals 0.1 and equals 0.05.

Carbon-14 is incorporated in the tissues of plants and animals through their environment. When they die the incorporation of carbon-14 ends, and what remains in the specimen decays at a constant rate, with a half-life of

Young- Earth view point on the age of earth is based on not only science but the Bible as well. There try to combine the two areas in an effort to present the true age of the earth. One of the areas they use is how long it takes for material to harden. They present

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8. Is it important to know exactly how old the earth is? Why or why not?

Scientist are able to use modern instruments to accurately date these rocks by measuring radioactive decay. These rocks are approximently 1.7 billion years old, less than half the age of the earth. These black rocks tell scientist not only how old they date back but

L. Vardiman, A.A. Snelling and E.F. Chaffin (Eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, and Creation Research Society, St. Joseph, Missouri, 2000.

In 1820 another French man named James Fourier took the next step in estimating the Earth’s age. He accounted for the fact that the Earth is still hot in its core and using mathematical techniques that he developed and we still use today for time-varying phenomena, came up with a number too staggering foe him to write down. He did however leave us his equations and it is easy to plug in the same numbers and get the answer that he could not say, which comes out to be 100 million years. (Gribbin, 16)

Before the discovery of radiometric methods to determine the age of the Earth, the first few attempts were off by thousands of millions

This method is used to determine the exact age of fossils, artifacts and the earth. This involves, examining several strata of the crust of the earth to show the time intervals of one layer of rock to another layer as well as use the layering principle to confirm the series of cultures.

This changed history forever. While it created controversy, due to some people’s attachments to the old ways of dating and doubts in this revolutionary method, it proved to be the closest method to have an accurate chronology of history. In 1955, to prove the accuracy or radiocarbon, Libby published a graph that showed the comparison of the results of radiocarbon dating of specimens from Egypt. These specimens had already an absolute known date. The graph proved the accuracy of Libby’s radiocarbon dating. Figure 1 (Renfrew, 1973)