For K-12 Students · Radiometric Dating
Radiometric Dating for a dirty-bomb scenario
Built for k-12 students learning it in middle or high school. Watch the idea come alive with plain-language steps and everyday examples — perfect for projects and homework. Simulate a dirty-bomb scenario live below — adjust the inputs and watch it respond, right in your browser.
Radiometric DatingLive
reading the atomic clock
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Radioactive isotopes decay at a fixed half-life, so the fraction remaining in a sample is a clock. Measure it and you can read the age: t = half-life × log₂(1/fraction). Carbon-14 dates organic material up to ~50,000 years; uranium-238, with a 4.5-billion-year half-life, dates the oldest rocks and the age of the Earth itself.
Data Inspector
Half-life5.73e+3 yr
Estimated age5.7 thousand yr
Best fororganic remains < 50k yr
Governing equation
Reading this result: About 50% of the Carbon-14 is left, which maps to roughly 1.0 half-lives of elapsed time.
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- Is this good for k-12 students?
- Yes — this version of "Radiometric Dating for a dirty-bomb scenario" is framed for k-12 students learning it in middle or high school. Watch the idea come alive with plain-language steps and everyday examples — perfect for projects and homework.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. It runs in any modern browser, free, with no account required.