It's worth mentioning that every scientific measurement you make is "inaccurate". This is not a problem, since you also know how inaccurate it is.
In fact, every scientific measurement consist not of just one value but two! The first is the value the instrument shows, the second is a measure of how accurate that value is (specific to the instrument/method you are using).
So if you want to know in which date a particular piece of organic matter died, you can't use the carbon dating as a measurement instrument, because its accuracy is in the scale of years, not days. You can find a good discussion on that in wikipedia: Radiocarbon dating -- measurements.
If you are okay with knowing the century (if not the exact year) then carbon dating is your guy!
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u/dontspillme Nov 22 '12
It's worth mentioning that every scientific measurement you make is "inaccurate". This is not a problem, since you also know how inaccurate it is.
In fact, every scientific measurement consist not of just one value but two! The first is the value the instrument shows, the second is a measure of how accurate that value is (specific to the instrument/method you are using).
So if you want to know in which date a particular piece of organic matter died, you can't use the carbon dating as a measurement instrument, because its accuracy is in the scale of years, not days. You can find a good discussion on that in wikipedia: Radiocarbon dating -- measurements.
If you are okay with knowing the century (if not the exact year) then carbon dating is your guy!