Radiometric Dating: A Sure Shot Method Of Knowing The Age Of Objects

Radiometric dating is a procedure used to identify the age of any radioactive material. Radioactive materials include trees, rocks, bones and also architectural monuments. Radiometric dating can even help us find out the age of something that is very, very old. For example, the age of earth was found out with help of radiometric dating. The earth is around 5.5 billion years old. Radiometric dating is also called as "radioactive dating". The common layman knows it by the name of "carbon dating".

For radiometric dating a device called a mass spectrometer is used. The mass spectrometer determines the isotopic or atomic samples. A mass spectrometer consists of an ion generator, analyzer and a few detectors. The sample of the object to be determined is ionized using the ion generator and a magnetic field is set up. With the help of a computer, one can find out the true details of the chronological age of the object. There are many new methods being followed but this is considered to be the traditional and reasonable method. Each object has a designated "half life" where half of the atoms of the object are destroyed. This helps the archaeologists to judge the object very easily.

Carbon dating has been followed since many years and though it may hold no value to a common man; it is very significant in the field of nature. Ages of trees, extinct animals and famous archaeological pieces can be easily found out using the process of radioactive dating. The best part of this is natural calamities like floods, volcanoes and earthquakes, do not affect the process of determining the age of any old rocks or mountains.

The isotopes of the elements do not change and hence it does not affect the outcome of the experiment. A good thing about radiometric dating of things is it can be done without causing any damage to the articles. However, accuracy is not a surety because it is almost impossible to know if the isotopes are still present in the object or not. Thus, carbon dating is a very useful process for ascertaining the age of old objects.