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certain ions of elements (ex Carbon 14) decay over time....... half life is the amount of time it takes for the original amount to be cut in half. It is a measured rate of decay and is based on a known concentration or ratio of the ion to the normal element (ex carbon 14 compared to carbon 12) based on how much of the ion is found in a sample compared to the regular element we can determine roughly how old the item is.

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Q: How can you use half life to date materials?
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Give an example of an isotope used in dating old objects?

cardon-14 by the use of carbon dating which is a process in which they use the half life of carbon to calculate the date of an object


What is the half-life of material?

i dont think it has 1..... if it does its a safe guess of millions of yearsAnswer:Half life is a concept used in connection with radioactive materials. it is the time required for half of the atoms to fission naturally. Steel is not radioactive.Some researchers use the term half-life as a measure of persistence in the environment or chemical reaction for any active material. In this sense the half-life of steel would be the time for half of the mass to oxidize or erode. With the various alloys which are called steel and the various conditions that they are exposed to there is no standard reference time frame for this reaction.


How is knowing the half-life of atoms useful?

Knowing the half-life of radioisotopes is useful for many reasons. We can look at a few examples to see why. If we have radioactive material, we need to know the half-life to know how long it is dangerous. This applies to fission products inside spent nuclear fuel. This fuel generates heat long after it has been removed from a reactor, and we have to store this stuff securely for many human lifetimes. Fission products of uranium and plutonium are super nasty, and they must be kept out of harm's way. Knowing the half-life of a certain material can allow us to date things that are old. Radiocarbon (carbon-14) is used to date things like skeletons or plant materials that archaeologists have recovered. We can also use something like uranium-lead to date rock structures back millions and even billions of years. There is a broad range of radioisotopes that we find in use in the medical field, and we need to know the half-lives of them. We might select a short-lived radioisotope to act as a tracer for medical imaging. A medical staff member will inject a patient or will have him ingest this substance, and then medical professionals take pictures. Knowing the half-life allows us to prepare the material closely enough to the time of use so that it is "potent" enough for the application. In another use, a radioactive isotope will be implanted to irradiate a tumor in a patient. The half-life of the material must be known and coupled to the amount of the substance used to calculate dosage to a patient.


What happens to the decayed portion of a radioactive element after the element reached it's half life?

When a radioactive material undergoes radioactive decay, except spontaneous fission, a daughter product is formed. The daughter may or may not be radioactive. If it is, this daughter product begins its own evolution according to its decay scheme and its own half-life. Any daughter products from that decay event will either be stable or will decay according to how (un)stable the daughter is and what its half-life happens to be. The original radionuclide continues to decay in its own way. You can see a "dynamic" developing here. The fact that a radioactive material has a half-life doesn't speak to what happens to the material or to its daughter products. It is only a measure of the rate of decay of a material. Radioactive materials decay according to what they are, and their daughter products will, if they are not stable, undergo decay as well, each according to its own decay scheme. The half-life only puts a timeline on things. And it (the half-life idea) must be applied to each unstable daughter. A consequence of radioactive decay and inspection of the daughter products allows us to use radioactive decay schemes to date materials. There are a number of radionuclides that are useful in doing this, and the decay schemes are well known. We understand the decay rates of the original material and also its daughters, and by counting all of them, we can "rewind time" to the period when they were isolated and state with good accuracy when the material was sequestered. Different methods of dating materials might be applied, depending on the material and its age.


Is radioactive decay slow?

Radioactive decay is measured as a half life and it varies enormously. REALLY enormously! The shortest half life is for artificial elements where the half life is a few millionths of a second, the longest is hydrogen which has a half life of far longer than the lifetime of the universe! Uranium has a half life of around 4000 million years; geologists use uranium (and other elements) to calculate the age of rocks based on how much of the uranium has decayed.

Related questions

What is radioactive half-life used for?

to determine how long it will take to half of nuclids to decay, having use in radioactive materials operations


Is francium used in radioactive lasers?

Francium has an extremely short half life of about 20 minutes so no it is not. Radioactive lasers do not use radioactive materials anyway.


Give an example of an isotope used in dating old objects?

cardon-14 by the use of carbon dating which is a process in which they use the half life of carbon to calculate the date of an object


What happens to radioactive materials if you do not use them?

That depends on the radioactive material. But whether you use it or not, the radioactive material will decay into other elements over the course of time. The time it takes for half of the material to decay into something else is called the "half-life". The more radioactive the substance is, the faster it decays. The half-life of a radioactive element can be measured from fractions of a second to billions of years.


To use radioactive dating for a substance you must know the substances?

Half-life


How would you date a sample of rock that you suspect being one of the earliest on Earth?

You would use a radioactive isotope with a long half life. Good luck!


How do you use half life in a sentence?

Uranium has a high half-life, so it changes very quickly.


Can half-life source be used for half-life mods?

No. Half-Life: Source runs on the Source engine. The original Half-Life doesn't. You cannot use mods made for the original Half-Life on Half-Life: Source because they run on different engines and it won't work.


What is the half-life of material?

i dont think it has 1..... if it does its a safe guess of millions of yearsAnswer:Half life is a concept used in connection with radioactive materials. it is the time required for half of the atoms to fission naturally. Steel is not radioactive.Some researchers use the term half-life as a measure of persistence in the environment or chemical reaction for any active material. In this sense the half-life of steel would be the time for half of the mass to oxidize or erode. With the various alloys which are called steel and the various conditions that they are exposed to there is no standard reference time frame for this reaction.


Half-life use in a sentences?

A Half-Life is half the time it takes for a radioactive element or a drug to lose its How_do_you_use_half_life_in_a_sentenceor change into something else.


How is knowing the half-life of atoms useful?

Knowing the half-life of radioisotopes is useful for many reasons. We can look at a few examples to see why. If we have radioactive material, we need to know the half-life to know how long it is dangerous. This applies to fission products inside spent nuclear fuel. This fuel generates heat long after it has been removed from a reactor, and we have to store this stuff securely for many human lifetimes. Fission products of uranium and plutonium are super nasty, and they must be kept out of harm's way. Knowing the half-life of a certain material can allow us to date things that are old. Radiocarbon (carbon-14) is used to date things like skeletons or plant materials that archaeologists have recovered. We can also use something like uranium-lead to date rock structures back millions and even billions of years. There is a broad range of radioisotopes that we find in use in the medical field, and we need to know the half-lives of them. We might select a short-lived radioisotope to act as a tracer for medical imaging. A medical staff member will inject a patient or will have him ingest this substance, and then medical professionals take pictures. Knowing the half-life allows us to prepare the material closely enough to the time of use so that it is "potent" enough for the application. In another use, a radioactive isotope will be implanted to irradiate a tumor in a patient. The half-life of the material must be known and coupled to the amount of the substance used to calculate dosage to a patient.


Can you use half life source on garrys mod?

Yes