What did you learn about Isotopes?

Out of the hundreds of carbon dating explanations I've heard, this is the _first time_ anyone has answered a question I've always had: How do we date something if all Carbon-14 is continually decaying everywhere? And Neil's answer is simple in its two parts: 1) The environment continually makes more such that the ratio is relatively stable by replenishing the decayed atoms, and 2) Living things replenish their internal stock of carbon up until, obviously, they die. Thank you, Neil.

If I had had teachers this good I wouldn’t be here at my age finally learning something so basic. Thank you Neil!

You should keep doing these types of episodes, fun, existing, informative. I wish my chemistry teacher was like you

Whoever's been editing your videos lately has been killing it. 👏🏻 Thanks for another great video, Neil and Chuck!

I know I may not be smarter. But I always feel smarter after watching these videos. This is a good one.

That is why I love this show, such simple explanation how it actually works the whole carbon dating.

Just before the end of the year, I was teaching this at class: nuclear desintegration and reactions, and Carbon-14 dating is a great source of exercises. As usual, you've explained it gorgeously.

Love this! I had forgotten how this worked, and occasionally it would come up, and I would think to myself that I had to look up how this worked bc I didn't remember. Thanks for the explanation! 😊

What a great explanation of isotopes of elements. Thank you.

I will just start carbon dating instead of asking for IDs

Ive been trying to learn about chemistry online and this was a great supplement about isotopes. In orher videos they just say the words and gloss over what they mean. It helps a lot to have a further explanation about specific things like this.

Freaking love you guys. Always excited to learn something new, and am never disappointed 😊

Great vid. I prefer these short explainers to the comedic/interrupting the guest shows. Thanks for having these available StarTalk.

I am no chemist. But an old friend Iv known for 23 years Gave me an old chemistry book his daughter studied from when she was young in high school. I left it in my basement on a shelf for roughly 10 years. Then one day during a bout of unemployment with nothing to do in boredom I came across it and began to read it some of it is hard and boring I'm no Mathematician but I read all the articles of interest. I am a mechanic retired now but back when I learned electronics and how every thing worked. But when I read that chemistry book I learned alot more about electricity it was amazing what I learned from that book. The how's and why. Simply amazing.

Love the visuals! Very helpful, I finally learned how carbon-14 works. Well done, everybody.😊 I'm re-reading Oliver Sacks' book "Uncle Tungsten" and am in the chapter of his love, as a young boy, for the elements, that never ceased his whole life. It was hard to imagine being so passionate about these but your video here helped me to see how that's possible. Thanks!

When one carbon atom really likes another carbon atom they start dating... 😅

A group is visiting a natural history museum. When their guide reaches at some very interesting dinosaur fossil, he says "This is a 180million and 12 years old fossil". Someone from the audience asks "Hey, how do you know it's 180million AND TWELVE???" "Well, I was told it was 180 million years old when I first came here, and I came 12 years ago"

great editing! I think this really helps the explainer videos get some extra value

Really enjoying watching your vids at work. Good stuff!! Always learning 🌟

So you explained about Carbon-14 and the decay. But if you age something by home much decayed, how did you know how much was there to start?

this was great, i vaguely understood how carbon dating worked but never had it explained properly, thanks. Isotopes and compounds are fascinating 😁

This video is extremely helpful, clear, and easy to understand.

I admire you so much Neil! Happy New Year for you and Chuck 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks Doc Tyson and Chuck Nice for this explainer. The visuals make it a lot more fun. I felt like I was back in science class.

Please, please: No background "music" while talking

This is a very clear and helpful explanation of some complex phenomena, allowing only interpretations and perspectives to conflict. 👍👍

This is a really well presented, entertaining and informative short lecture on isotopes. Fun related fact: as Dr. Tyson alluded to, the man made nuclear tests added so much Carbon-14 to the environment that it changed these ratios, and the ratios went back to the natural levels when atomic testing stopped. Scientists can actually look for nuclear bomb era testing levels of C-14 in tissue and make all sorts of interesting conclusions as there is sort of a nuclear fingerprint. One conclusion reached by examining nuclear bomb C-14 levels in Greenland sharks was that they have extremely long lifespans - 390 years or even longer. By looking at the amount of nuclear bomb era C-14 levels in the molars of human skeletons we can estimate the age of the person when they died to within 1 or 2 years. So it's possible to make conclusions not just how long ago something died, but how old it was when it did.

I'm glad I watched this video because the isotope stuff I learned back in highschool was beginning to fade from my memory.

Maybe it helps to point out that C14 is generated from the N14 in the air, and thus is converted into sugar by green plants via photosynthesis. The C14 we humans ingest is already in the process of decaying, and continues to decay in our body, so the age we determine from C14 dating is not exactly our age, but the age of the leaf or fruit of the plant we ate (or the animal ate which meat we eat), and whose organic matter our body converts into its own organic matter. Thus the presence of cosmic rays and atmospheric nitrogen is what in the end causes C14 to be present in organic matter and not in fossil matter, because the fossil carbon was not exposed to atmospheric nitrogen converted into radioactive carbon for a very long time.

A very good explainer video. This is how it should be done!! Shoutout to the ones who made the graphics alongside the explainer !!

Great talk! Thanks Professor! Happy New Year!!!

Great explanation - loved it!

Chucks unstable reference had me rolling😅

Thanks guys ! This was super helpful. Currently talking about this in my Anthropology class and was wondering what the heck it is LOL fascinating

Thank you so much! ❤ Super helpful and interesting!

This was very informative, thank you!

I'm digging the background music

I’m a nuclear medicine technologist. Always cool when Dr. Tyson visits my neck of the woods.

Thank you for that clear and succinct explanation.

Love the visuals it help a lot. Thank you.

This was extremely helpful. Thanks!!

Thank you very much for the great explanation, Neil! You are the best! 😊

It's so much better when you add pictures and animations to your videos.

Somehow, the editing has become even better than before. Excellent stuff 😂 🤗 🥰

Superb, I havn't studied science as a subject in my graduation and post studies. but lemme tell you, I was always interested, (can't get it coz' am poor at maths.) THIS IS THE BEST VIDEP TO TEACH ME THE CONCEPT OF ANY ONE PART OF SCIENCE - in this case Carbon Dating. Look forward to get more such videos. Great Work

Nicely explained. Big Thank you

Awesome lesson about our periodic table of elements 😂!!! Love ya Neil, please keep em commin cause I have a huge thirst for knowledge 😉 😜

I can watch this kind of video all day long! Thank you Neil 🧠👏🏼

I can never remember how that stuff works! I'm definitely saving this video.

Amazing explanation!

That was such a good lesson! I never really understood carbon 14 dating till now, thank you!

ניל דגריי כל מה שהינך מלמד אפילו שהם חזרה על הנלמד מדהים בפשטות ההסבר. מרצה מעולה והומניסט . תודה רבה .

These are so good! Some people look at you sideways for even knowing about isotopes smh. Also, your editor is goated.

Finally an explanation that a dyslexic could comprehend straight away! Thank you!! Super fun to listen to and now I am eager to try and get more understanding on a topic that used to give me anxiety 👍🏼

I'm so old that archaeologists want to date me. Just to be clear, you don't get C-14 by whacking two neutrons into C-12, but by throwing a neutron at N-14 and knocking out a proton. (That's not exactly what happens, but I challenge anyone to explain it better in less than 50 words.) The C-14 then decays back to N-14 by emitting an electron and an antineutrino.

Great explanation, thanks

What a great explanation, thank you.

When Mendeleev made his periodic table in 1869, he did not know what a proton was, because the proton was not discovered until 1917. Mendeleev made his periodic chart, based on the chemical properties and other physical properties of the elements, and was clever enough to predict some of the missing elements. The chemical properties of an element depends on the number of protons in the elements core, so in away, Mendeleev was indirectly basing his periodic chart on the number of protons each element has per atom.

I love this man. Loud and clear❤

Did you guys just change your logo and image this morning? It looks FANTASTIC. I've secretly been hoping for a new logo for a while now 😂

Thank you for took me to my school days. A perfect show for who love science and for those who hates.

Great source of science, thanks Dr. Tyson and the other gentleman.

We needed this from you. Thanks

This was excellent, thank you Neil and Chuck. I'm going to seem really smart on day 1 of my intro to radiation physics course. Day 2 maybe not so much...

Nicely explained

Fun learning experience.

Beautifully explained 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

GREAT CONTENT

Interesting and useful, thank you!

I wish my science teachers were more like you Neil. You make it fun to learn science. From grade 7-12, I disliked science class because my teachers were boring. I'm 29 and have learned so much from you.

Learning more physics and chemistry from you than I did in high school 😢

-What did the chemist say when he found two new isotopes of helium? HeHe -Are there any good jokes about sodium? Na

As always great video keep it up ❤

Learned more in 10 minutes watching this than I did in a whole year of chemistry class

Neil is one of the best for me... His explanation is clear and concise. Easy to understand. This is best carbon dating chapter of my life 🤣

I’ve learnt something today. Cheers

Da Tyson pulling in clutch with this refresher so I can listen to that JRE podcast with the mammoth bones

Brilliantly explained.

I f**king love these videos. Thank you for teaching me❤ You’re never too old to learn.

Carbon dating is a hotline where coal, diamonds and graphite gather to have a good time.

Mate will watch all your video's you are the man thanks

I'd love to see an explainer on precious metals; rarity, what makes them desirable, useful in scientific applications, industrial ones, emissions even. I know Neil has an 18kt gold Moonwatch, fitting for a cosmologist, he knows a thing or two about them. I find them fascinating from a materials/ elemental point of view. I'm not a $5, its a cup of coffee, Patreon member but I thought I'd ask.

Good, fun, and educational.

As someone who create video, that mini dolly zoom when Neil reveals carbon isotopes delights my soul

Question please... It's my understanding that Carbon14 atoms are formed by the interaction of cosmic rays to form the isotope. If the rate of cosmic ray saturation is based on the magnetic shield of Earth which fluctuates in intensity, and we havent been monitoring the magnetic shield for that long, how can we be positive about the decay rate? Also...doesnt that also hold true for other radiometric dating processes?

Wow😮 a lot of knowledge 😊

2:36 i always love these sudden genius comedy moments in startalk 😂 every time i watch these two my anxiety disagrees

Outstanding video! What are your thoughts on nuclear rearrangements to reduce radioactive waste?

If educators and materials were selected by the amount of engagement provided. Tyson would be the benchmark

The Great Explainer! 👏🏻

Love it❤

Good vid

a useful intuition about decay that has a half life, is that it is 1 a random process whether fundamentally random or not, and two there is no difference from one second to the next in the probability of decay related to entropy. take for example the branch of a dead tree, if it is decaying continually, at some point it will break, but as time passes, it will get into a less and less structurally sound state, this is not how nuclear decay works, a tree branch does not have a similar kind of half life, only sort of over very short time scales to to speak, you can do statistics on tree branches if you are careful about the material strength and shape and so on, and the probability of them breaking would be on average some like some very long half life, that gets shorter and shorter very suddenly some time after the tree dies. so a process like nuclear decay if it is to be modeled by some process happening to a structure, it would basically have to be some structure that is preserved more or less exactly on average over time, but that can fluctuate into different configurations randomly or quasi randomly and the rarity of a state corresponding to a decay is what would give you the half life, if you had a million, you expect one to decay every so often, then you turn that expectation for short times into a rate of having half of them decay, and there you go, it is important to keep the factoid that the process is not some progressing decay over time until the last straw breaks the camels back, but a kind of random jiggling of the structure that sometimes leads to decay, that is characteristic of randomness that doesn't change from moment to moment, like trowing a die and hoping for a 6, you are just as likely to get it on the first throw as the millionth.

if only my school teacher had such talent of teaching.... I would have become a scientist

4:50 Once again, Chuck does his best to get canceled in 3...2...1... 😂

*I think I will remember what I learned today from watching this video for a very long time. Carbon 14’s half life is 5,740 years. I have learned so much more from watching StarTalk videos than what I learned from my high school physics class*

Neil, where were you when I was in high school and needed a chemistry teacher who could elements and isotopes where I could understand them?

I feel like this one needs to be longer. How is heavy water different? How is helium 3 different? Why are they out there??

💀 this guy explained it so easily i have never felt this easy to comprehend anything