Physicists Help Solve Cold Cases
FEB 07, 2013
Accelerator measurements of tooth fragments help detectives identify remains.
Physicists Help Solve Cold Cases
Get Inside the Science:
Cold cases heat up through Lawrence Livermore approach to identifying remains
Inside Science Buzzwords:
- Carbon-14 (C-14) - An unstable form of carbon that is used for radiocarbon dating.
- Radiocarbon dating - A process that can measure the amount of C-14 in a sample to estimate the sample’s age.
- Accelerator - A device that speeds up objects such as electrons and ions (electrically charged atoms and molecules).
- Accelerator Mass Spectrometry - A technique that identifies the different kinds of atoms and molecules in a sample by using a particle accelerator to separate the sample’s various atoms and molecules by their different masses.
- Mass - The amount of matter in an object; the most common form of carbon (carbon-12 ) has less mass than carbon-14.
