- Accelerator mass spectrometry detects carbon 14 in samples.
- AMS dating involves accelerating the ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies followed by mass analysis.
- Samples are converted to graphite prior to AMS carbon dating.
- Although more expensive than radiometric dating, AMS dating has higher precision and needs small sample sizes.
- Aside from archaeology and geology, AMS dating is also used in other fields like biomedical research and ocean sciences research.
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
Mass spectrometers detect atoms of specific elements according to their atomic weights. They, however, do not have the sensitivity to distinguish atomic isobars (atoms of different elements that have the same atomic weight, such as in the case of carbon 14 and nitrogen 14—the most common isotope of nitrogen).
due to nuclear physics, mass spectrometers have been fine-tuned to separate a rare isotope from an abundant neighboring mass, and accelerator mass spectrometry evolved. A method has finally been developed to detect carbon 14 in a given sample and ignore the more abundant isotopes that swamp the carbon 14 signal.
