What is an isotope provide an example?
What is an isotope provide an example?
Isotopes can be defined as the variants of chemical elements that possess the same number of protons and electrons, but a different number of neutrons. For example, carbon-14, carbon-13, and carbon-12 are all isotopes of carbon.
How do you find the isotope?
Subtract the atomic number (the number of protons) from the rounded atomic weight. This gives you the number of neutrons in the most common isotope. Use the interactive periodic table at The Berkeley Laboratory Isotopes Project to find what other isotopes of that element exist.
What are the problems with radioactive isotopes?
effects: hair loss, skin burns, nausea, gastrointestinal distress, or death (Acute Radiation Syndrome). Long-term health risks include an increased cancer risk. Such risks depend upon the function of the specific radioisotope; and the route, magnitude, and duration of exposure.
Why is carbon 14 not useful in nuclear medicine?
Answer: It is all to do with the emitted radiation and the half-life of the source. Carbon 14 is a beta emitter with a half-life of 5570 years. Of course a small fraction of the carbon atoms in your body are carbon 14 so you are already radioactive!!
Can Uranium 235 be used to date dinosaur bones?
This means that isotopes with a short half-life won’t work to date dinosaur bones. Some of the isotopes used for this purpose are uranium-238, uranium-235 and potassium-40, each of which has a half-life of more than a million years. Unfortunately, these elements don’t exist in dinosaur fossils themselves.
Why we do not use radiocarbon for dating dinosaur bones?
To determine the age of a dinosaur fossil, carbon dating can never be used. By the time a dinosaur fossil was found, any carbon-14 the organism would have taken up and incorporated into its tissues during its life, would have decayed too much to be useful as a tool to determine its age.
Has Dinosaur Soft Tissue been found?
Unlike bones and teeth, which can survive for hundreds of millions of years, soft tissues are among the first materials to disappear during the fossilization process. Even so, scientists have found intact soft tissue in dinosaur bones before.