Carbon-14 Dating Calculator

About this calculator

Carbon-14 dating estimates the age of once-living material by measuring how much of its original ¹⁴C has decayed back into nitrogen-14. Living organisms maintain a constant ¹⁴C ratio while exchanging carbon with the atmosphere, but that exchange stops at death, after which ¹⁴C decays with a half-life of 5,730 years: age = −(half-life / ln 2) × ln(fraction remaining), or equivalently, the fraction remaining after time t is (1/2)^(t/5730).

Archaeologists and geologists use this method to date organic remains — wood, bone, charcoal, shells, textiles — reliably up to roughly 50,000 years old, beyond which the remaining ¹⁴C becomes too faint to measure accurately, which is why it's the go-to technique for dating everything from ancient campfires to the Dead Sea Scrolls.