Why is carbon 14 useful for dating archaeological artifacts




Carbon-14 is useful in dating archeological artifacts because of the following reasons:
          carbon-14 is radioactive meaning it decays spontaneously with a half-life of 5730 years, it is absorbed by plant  durng photosynthesis making it part of the plant,  carbon-14 has it non-radioactive counterpart which is also available in the plant body. It has a half-life of almost 50 thousand years making it possible to date object as old as 50,000 years, and lastly carbon atom is part of both plant and animals( animal get the radioactive carbon when they feed on photosynthetic plant).

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