Radiocarbon Comic

So What are we
learning about
today??
Radiocarbon
dating...
So It can tell me
how old the
sweaters I got from
goodwill are?
RAdiocarbon dating? That's
great, cause there's this
Radiocarbon i've been wanting
to date, but she doesn't like
me all that much - what
should i do?
I think you should buy her
flowers, but that's not what we're
talking about. I mean the kind of
radiocarbon dating where we take
Carbon 14 atoms to determine how
old something is...
No - it
has to
be
some
thing
much
older..

Like a dinosaur fossil?
No, that's too old.
It has to be in the range of a couple
to several thousand years old to use
effectively, Because carbon 14's
halflife is 5,730 years...
I guess I don't get it.
Maybe if I saw a bunch of
people dressed like
atoms demonstrating
the concepts about
radiocarbon dating I
could inderstand it...
Your words
here...

These people all Represent Nitrogen 14 atoms floating
around in the atmosphere - Suddenly a comic Ray comes in.
then through violent collisions with atoms in the
atmosphere, the cosmic ray produces an energetic
neutron.
dude, whereyagoin?
This neutron flies
into another atom of
n14 and knocks out me
- a proton

This just changed us to
Carbon 14!!
this radioactive form of carbon is
incorporated into carbon dioxide that living
organisms absorb through photosynthesis
or ingestion. The small fraction of carbon
in living organisms that is c14 stays
constant until the organism dies...
Then the c14 starts to
decay back into n14. the
ratio of c14 to c12 (a
stable form of carbon)
can be used to determine
how long ago the plant
or animal that absorbed it
died. This is based on c14's
halflife of 5,730 years,
and the laws of
radioactive decay.
after the
neutron
knocked the
proton out of
the picture...

ok, I get now. but I
still have one more
question...
what kind of
flowers should I
get her?
radiocarbon dating was written and enacted by cosmology
workshop group 1 - chantel, derek, saneel, and brad
comic by nocera 2007