Carbon 14

The archaeologists measure the amount of carbon 14 in ancients objects to find out how ancient these are.Dr Willard F. Libby won the Nobel prize in 1960 when he devise this method.Actually the scientists can use samples of 5 milligrams to have results in some hours.

Being the average life of this isotope of the carbon of more than 5000 years, it is enough to measure the percentage of C-14 in a sample to find the age of pieces up to fifty thounsand years.

The following example was copied of the page, " HTML:Teach Yourself HTML " (http://www.chepd.mq.edu.au/boomerang/teaching.www/java/carbdate.htm):

Years	C-14 average life = 5730
C-14 remaining = %

Fill the textbox "Years", and press the button " Calculate " to obtain the percentage of C-14 that you can find in a sample.

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