How does “Carbon Dating” work?
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a tiny fraction of carbon in the environment is slightly radioactive, when a living organisms eats it takes in some of this radioactive carbon and as it ages some is lost so the ratio is fairly constant
when an organism dies the radioactive carbon stays in them and slowly the radioactive one decays at a predictable rate and tuns into nitrogen, by measuring how much radioactive carbon-14 is left, you can estimate how long ago that thing died
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