Question

Mildred collects a sample of fossilized plant material. She takes it back to her lab to run some tests on it. Mildred is able to measure the amount of carbon-14 in her sample and compare this to the amount of carbon-12 in it. She uses this information to calculate that the fossil is 4,500 years old.

Answer 1

Answer:

The process that Mildred used is known as Radiocarbon dating

Note: The question is incomplete. The complete question is given below:

Mildred collects a sample of fossilized plant material. She takes it back to her lab to run some tests on it. Mildred is able to measure the amount of carbon-14 in her sample and compare this to the amount of carbon-12 in it. She uses this information to calculate that the fossil is 4,500 year old. The process that Mildred used is known as _______

Radiocarbon dating

Faulting

Indexing

Superposition

Explanation:

Radiocarbon dating is a process of determining the age estimates of various objects and materials using the radioactive properties of an isotope of carbon, carbon-14.

Radiocarbon dating uses the ratio of two isotopes of carbon, carbon-12 and carbon-14 present in materials which contains carbon to determine their age.

There is a fairly constant ratio of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in living organisms. However, at death, due to the decay of carbon-14 to carbon-12, the ratio begins to change. Since the rate of decay of carbon-14 is fairly constant, a property known as half-life, the time it has taken for carbon-14 to decay to carbon-12 can be calculated. This calculated time will givee the age of the fossilised material.