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Radiometric dating. Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares the abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope within the material to ...
Half-life (symbol t½) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential (or, rarely ...
v. t. e. Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered radioactive. Three of the most common types of decay are alpha, beta, and gamma decay.
The quantity of isotopes in the decay chains at a certain time is described by the Bateman equation. Due to its peculiarities, isotopically enriched materials out of equilibrium with its natural decay products can occasionally increase in radioactivity for an amount of time, contrary to common intuition about radioactive decay. [2]
Isochron dating. An isochron plot of the radiogenic daughter isotope (D*) against the parent isotope (P), all normalized to a stable isotope of the daughter element (D ref). It demonstrates the isotopic evolution as the sample ages from t 0 to t 1 to t 2. Isochron dating is a common technique of radiometric dating and is applied to date certain ...
In nuclear physics, a decay product (also known as a daughter product, daughter isotope, radio-daughter, or daughter nuclide) is the remaining nuclide left over from radioactive decay. Radioactive decay often proceeds via a sequence of steps (decay chain). For example, 238 U decays to 234 Th which decays to 234m Pa which decays, and so on, to ...
Decay correction is one way of working out what the radioactivity would have been at the time it was taken, rather than at the time it was tested. For example, the isotope copper-64, commonly used in medical research, has a half-life of 12.7 hours. If you inject a large group of animals at "time zero", but measure the radioactivity in their ...
Rubidium–strontium dating. The rubidium–strontium dating method (Rb–Sr) is a radiometric dating technique, used by scientists to determine the age of rocks and minerals from their content of specific isotopes of rubidium (87 Rb) and strontium (87 Sr, 86 Sr). One of the two naturally occurring isotopes of rubidium, 87 Rb, decays to 87 Sr ...