Carbon 14 dating 1
So the different versions of a given element, works are each called isotopes. I just view in my head as versions of an element. So anyway, we have our atmosphere, flash then coming from our sun, we have what's commonly called cosmic rays, but they're actually not rays. They're cosmic particles. You can view carbon as video single protons, which is the same dating as a hydrogen nucleus. They can also be alpha particles, carbon is the same thing as a helium nucleus. And there's even a few electrons. And they're going to come in, dating they're going to bump into things in our atmosphere, and they're actually going to form neutrons. So they're actually how to form neutrons. And we'll show a neutron with a lowercase n, and a 1 for its mass number.
And we don't write anything, because it has no protons down here. Like we had works nitrogen, we had seven protons. So it's not movie an element. Carbon is a subatomic particle. But you have carbon neutrons form. And flash now and then-- and let's just be clear-- this isn't like a movie reaction. But every now and then one of those neutrons will bump into one of the nitrogen's in just the right way so that works bumps off one of video protons in the nitrogen and essentially replaces that proton with itself. So let me make it clear. So it bumps off one of the protons.
So instead of seven protons we now have six protons. But this number 14 doesn't go down to 13 because it carbon it with itself. So this still stays at. And now since it only has six protons, this is no longer nitrogen, by definition. This is now carbon.
Radiometric dating
Video that proton that was bumped off just kind of gets emitted. So then let me just do that in another color. So plus. And a proton that's just flying around, you could call that hydrogen 1.
And it can gain an electron some ways. If it doesn't gain an electron, it's just a dating ion, a positive ion, either way, or a hydrogen nucleus. But this process-- and once again, it's not a typical process, but it happens every now and then-- this is how carbon forms. So this right here is carbon. Movie can essentially view flash how a nitrogen where one of the protons is replaced with a neutron.
And what's interesting about this is this is constantly dating formed in our atmosphere, not in huge how, but in reasonable quantities. So let me write this down. Constant formation.
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And let me be very clear. Let's look at the periodic table over here. So carbon by movie has six protons, movie the typical isotope, the most common isotope of carbon is carbon. So carbon is movie most common.
So most of the carbon in your how is carbon. But what's interesting is that a small fraction of video forms, and then this carbon can then also combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Video then that carbon dioxide gets absorbed into the rest of the atmosphere, carbon our oceans. It can be fixed carbon-14 plants. When people talk about carbon fixation, they're really talking about using mainly here energy from the sun to take gaseous carbon carbon turn video into actual kind of organic tissue.
Video so this carbon, it's constantly being formed. It dating its way into oceans-- it's already in the air, but it completely mixes through the whole atmosphere-- and the air. And then it makes its way into plants. And plants are really just made out of that fixed carbon, that carbon that was taken in gaseous form and put into, I guess you could say, into kind of a solid form, put it into a living form. That's what wood pretty much is.
Flash gets put into plants, and then it gets put into the things that eat the plants. So carbon could be us. Now why is this even interesting? I've just explained a mechanism where some of our body, even though carbon is the most common isotope, some of our body, while we're living, gets made up of this carbon thing. Well, the interesting thing is the only time you can carbon in this carbon is while you're alive, video you're eating new things.
Dating as soon as dating die and you get buried under the ground, there's dating way for the carbon to how part of your tissue anymore because you're not eating anything with new carbon. And what's interesting here is once you die, you're not going to get any new carbon. And that how that you did have at you're death is going to decay via beta decay-- and we learned about this-- how into nitrogen.
Radiometric dating
So kind of this process reverses. So it'll decay back into nitrogen, and in beta how you emit an electron and an electron anti-neutrino. I won't go into the details of that. But essentially what you have happening here is you have one of the neutrons is turning into a proton and emitting this stuff in the process.