In 1939, Martin Kamen and Samuel Ruben of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley began experiments to determine if any of the elements common in organic matter had isotopes with half-lives long enough to be of value in biomedi… 展开

The variation in the C/ C ratio in different parts of the carbon exchange reservoir means that a straightforward calculation of the age of a sample based on the amount of C it contains will often give an incorrect result. There ar… 展开

Samples for dating need to be converted into a form suitable for measuring the C content; this can mean conversion to gaseous, liquid, or solid form, depending on the measurement technique to be used. Before this can b… 展开

For decades after Libby performed the first radiocarbon dating experiments, the only way to measure the C in a sample was to detect the radioactive decay of individual carbon atoms. In this approach, what is measured is the … 展开