New Laboratories

Abstract

According to information from Yale, the basement of one of the University's buildings in New Haven is in the process of being converted into a well shielded laboratory where radiocarbon dating techniques will be studied by a group of Yale scientists and historians. Pioneered by physicist W. F. Libby of the University of Chicago's Institute for Nuclear Studies, the carbon‐14 time identification method has been employed in dating organic materials of historical interest which may be as much as fifteen thousand years old, and the Yale project will be concerned primarily with verifying and refining the technique. A major part of the program will involve experiments designed to check results against well‐established archaeological data. The method itself depends upon the fact that carbon‐14, which is normally absorbed by living plants and animals, has a half‐life of over fifty‐five hundred years. In order to date organic matter (such as bone, wood, textiles, paper, or plant remains buried in geological deposits), samples are converted chemically into pure carbon, which is then shielded from outside radioactive sources so that the carbon‐14 disintegration rate may be measured with the aid of a geiger counter. Calculation of the amount of radiocarbon which has decayed gives a reasonably accurate estimate of the age of the sample.