Talk:WikiJournal of Science/Radiocarbon dating

Recommendation
British Archaeology, the magazine of the Council for British Archaeology, has a note in each issue on its protocol for citing radiocarbon dates. The note refers readers to this article for further information. Dudley Miles (discuss • contribs) 17:40, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Plagiarism check
✅ WMF copyvio tool using TurnItIn. Short phrases such as "...received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960" were similarly used in external pages, but not regarded as plagiarism. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 10:58, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Reader Comments
Would it be possible for the authors to include a section on compliance with ethical standards to the end of this manuscript. A suitable section for this paper would be (if there are indeed no conflicts of interest and no studies with human or animal subjects):


 * Compliance with Ethical Standards


 * Conflicts of Interest
 * Mike Christie has not declared any potential conflits of interest


 * Human and animal Subjects
 * This article does not contain any studes with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors

Van Vlijmen (discuss • contribs) 07:15, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd be fine with including this; I'm not sure of the format required, so if there is a example article that has such a section, please post a link so I can copy the format. Mike Christie (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Third peer review
{{review
 * version = https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Radiocarbon_dating&oldid=1864195
 * date   = 30 May 2018

Introductory Part
“Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of 14C in the atmosphere, which attained a maximum in 1963 of almost twice what it had been before the testing began.”

The maximum occurred at different years in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Check Hua et al. (2013).

“Accelerator mass spectrometry has since become the method of choice; it counts all the 14C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements;”

It does not count all the atoms.

Background
“...they were able to demonstrate that they contained radioactive 14C.”

This sounds a bit odd to me as if 14C could be both radioactive and non-radioactive.

Physical Chemical Details

Here if you call the section “details” you could include the reactions for the formation of 14CO2.

Principles

“It will therefore have the same proportion of 14C...”

Should be 14C.

“the calculations for radiocarbon years assume that the 14C/

12C ratio has not changed over time.”

Add “the atmospheric 14C/12C ratio has not...”

“Since the calibration curve (IntCal) also reports past 14C radioactivity using this conventional...”

You need to add references for the IntCal curves and replace 14C with 14C. I also think 14C radioactivity sounds odd. Perhaps atmospheric 14C concentration?

Carbon Exchange Reservoir

“...if another reservoir has a lower ratio of 14C to 12C, it indicates that the carbon is older and hence that some of the 14C has decayed.”

Not necessarily. See for example the case of reservoir effects. There may be situations in which a lower 14C/C ratio does not mean radiocarbon decay but rather 14C not entering the system, a lack of replenishment. Alternatively, an input of 12C and 13C would also lower the ratio 14C/C in a given system.

“Creatures living at the ocean surface have the same 14C ratios as the water they live in...”

Provided corrections for the isotopic fractionation are performed.

“...the atmosphere and have the same 14C/12C ratio as the atmosphere.”

Again provided corrections for the isotopic fractionation are performed.

Dating considerations
Isotopic Fractionation

“...so that direct measurements of 14C radiation are similar to measurements for the rest of the biosphere.”

It is better to say measurements of 14C concentration. Measuring 14C radiation implies using the conventional technique.

Reservoir Effects Marine

“These deviations can be accounted in calibration, and software such as CALIB can estimate the appropriate correction for different locations.”

This is misleading. Although CALIB, OxCal and other calibration software are able to estimate ∆R corrections based on radiocarbon ages provided by the user, they cannot estimate appropriate ∆R corrections for different locations to be used during calibration. When one needs to calibrate a marine radiocarbon age, they need to have the appropriate ∆R correction

PRIOR calibration. The software will not give this value to you.

Check Ascough et al. (2005) and Alves et al. (2018) for information that can strengthen this section and other sections in the paper.

Other Effects

Here you should also discuss the case in which modern organic material is incorporated into freshwater systems.

Samples
“Alkali and acid washes can be used to remove humic acid and carbonate contamination, but care has to be taken to avoid destroying or damaging the sample.”

Here you are describing the treatment of an organic sample. Also, of course there is nothing wrong with damaging or destructing the sample since 14C-AMS is a destructive technique. You probably mean something like care should be taken not to lose the sample? Sometimes, when removing contaminants, we can also remove the original carbon atoms that we want to date.

Preparation and size

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)

The acronym is only defined in the last lines but the technique has been mentioned before.

“Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is much more sensitive, and samples as small as 0.5 milligrams can be used”

Make it clear you are talking about 0.5 mg OF CARBON. Not 0.5 mg of the original sample!

Accelerator mass spectrometry

“The ions are accelerated and passed through a stripper, which removes several electrons so

that the ions emerge with a positive charge.”

It is important to mention that the stripper is used to break molecular isobars such as 13CH.

Calculations

“...which was prepared by NIST”

Define what NIST is.

REFERENCES

Alves, E. Q., Macario, K., Ascough, P., Bronk Ramsey, C. (2018).The worldwide marine radiocarbon reservoir effect: Definitions, mechanisms, and prospects. Reviews of Geophysics, 56. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017RG000588

Hua, Q., Barbetti, M., & Rakowski, A. Z. (2013). Atmospheric radiocarbon for the period 1950–2010. Radiocarbon, 55(4), 2059–2072.

Ascough, P., Cook, G., & Dugmore, A. (2005). Methodological approaches to determining the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect. Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 29(4), 532–547.

}}

Reference error
Reference number 13 (Russell, 2011) is giving an error. Can this be corrected? Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 07:08, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. It was an issue with the month parameter in the template. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 09:31, 22 June 2018 (UTC)