Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a special way that scientists can figure out how old something is, like an ancient bone or an old piece of wood. It's called radiocarbon dating because it measures the amount of carbon-14 (a type of atom) in the object.

You see, everything that's alive today (like plants and animals) has carbon-14 in it, but when they die, the carbon-14 starts to break down and disappear. Scientists know how long it takes for half of the carbon-14 to disappear (this is called its "half-life"), so they can figure out how old something is by measuring how much carbon-14 is left.

It's like when you play with blocks and build a big tower. If someone knocks it over, you can count how many blocks are still standing and figure out how many blocks were there to begin with. In the same way, scientists count how much carbon-14 is left in the object and use that to figure out how much was there when it was alive. Then they can calculate how many years have passed since it died based on the half-life of carbon-14.

So radiocarbon dating is a special tool that scientists use to figure out how old things are. It's like doing detective work to solve a mystery!