Assuming that the global amount of radiocarbon is constant, decaying Carbon-14 is repeatedly restored in organisms while they are alive. However, when an organism dies, the amount of Carbon-14 begins to decrease as it decays to Nitrogen-14. A peat bed sample is found to have 6% of Carbon-14 remaining from a specific type of bivalve shells.


Required:

How old is the peat bed?

Q&A Education