Interpretation: The reason why carbon dating is not used to find the age of diamonds is to be determined.
Concept Introduction:Radioactive dating is the process by which the age of a substance can be determined.
Answer to Problem 2RQ
Scientists use uranium to determine the age of a diamond due to the small half-life of carbon 14. Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5730 years but most natural diamonds are millions of years old. Therefore, carbon dating of diamonds is pretty difficult.
Explanation of Solution
In 5730 years, the amount of carbon 14 present in diamonds becomes half, in another 5730 years half of that and so on. After a couple hundred thousand years, the amount of carbon 14 will be too small to be easily detected as diamonds have a much longer life than that. But uranium on the other hand, has a half-life of 700 million to 1 billion years. So, it will remain intact even after a long time and can be detected more easily.
Chapter 19 Solutions
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