Curated OER
Frosty the Snowman Meets His Demise: An Analogy to Carbon Dating
Students read and discuss an article about carbon dating, then participate in a hands-on lab to discover how carbon dating works. Students also write a letter to a friend explaining the process, and how archeologists use the process to...
Curated OER
Carbon 14 Dating
Evaluating and analyzing exponential functions will help your archaeologists find the amount of Carbon 14 remaining in a plant in this real-life task centered on carbon dating. Learners will also be introduced to the concept of half-life.
Curated OER
Carbon 14 Dating, Variation 2
Your archaeologists begin this task with a table of values to estimate the time passed based on the half-life of Carbon 14 remaining in a plant. They then move on to find when a specific amount of Carbon 14 is present in the same plant,...
Curated OER
Half-Life Lab
Learners participate in a lab in which they are introduced to carbon-dating. In groups, they use the holes of paper from a hole puncher and determine the rate of retention after shaking coins onto the same area. They record their...