How does carbon 14 work?

Answer 1

From Wikipedia (see the Related Link below):

By emitting an electron and an anti-neutrino, carbon-14 is changed into stable (non-radioactive) nitrogen-14. This decay can be used to get a measure of how long ago a piece of once-living material died. However, aquatic plants obtain some of their carbon from dissolved carbonates which are likely to be very old, and thus deficient in the carbon-14 isotope, so the method is less reliable for such materials as well as for samples derived from animals with such plants in their food chain.

The reaction is:

146C ---> 147N + e- + antineutrino

Answer 2

Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of Carbon-12. It has two extra neutrons in the nucleus. It decays with Beta Minus (B-) decay with a half-live of about 5700 years. Carbon-14 is in living things in a specific ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12. Scientists can date the material by comparing the percentage of Carbon-14 against the amount of Carbon-12. The reason this works is because the amounts of Carbon-12 and Carbon-14 is relatively constant while the organism is alive, and begins to decay with that 5700 year half-live at the moment of death.

Over the centuries, the amount of Carbon-14 available for the organism to ingest has varied. The results in the need to correct the decay curve of the Carbon-14.

Answer 3

During the beta decay the nucleus loses one neutron and gains one proton so Atomic Mass remains the same while atomic number is increases by one unit so carbon-14 is converted into Nitrogen-14.

Answer 4

Carbon-14 decays to produce Nitrogen-14 through a negative beta emission. In this process, a neutron in the carbon-14 emits an electron and an electron antineutrino, becoming a proton in the process. The atomic number increases because the number of protons increases. The number of nucleons stays the same, so the isotope number stays the same. A compare of the mass of nitrogen-14 with that of carbon-14 indicates a loss of the mass of an electron and an antineutrino in the process, so even though the atomic number increases, the atomic mass declines very slightly.

Answer 5

When carbon-14 decays, it emits a negative beta particle and becomes nitrogen-14.71
Nitrogen -14.

Answer 6

14C radioactively decays into 14N by releasing one beta particle.

Answer 7

Since one of the neutrons in the nucleus transforms into a proton, it becomes nitrogen 14.

Answer 8

Carbon 14 decays into Nitrogen 14 via beta decay.

Answer 9

nitrogen

Answer 10

Nitrogen 14