Everything You Need to Know About Isotopes
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- Опубликовано: 18 июн 2024
- What is an isotope? Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down isotopes-like carbon-14, deuterium, and helium-3-and the variations that exist in the periodic table of elements. What happens when you add a neutron?
We break down what is going on in the nucleus of atoms as well as go over common isotopes. What is “heavy water”? Learn about deuterium, tritium, isotopes of helium, and carbon-14. How do we use carbon-14 dating to find out the age of an object?
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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!
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00:00 - Introduction
00:20 - The Periodic Table of Elements
2:44 - Neutrons in the Nucleus
4:03 - Hydrogen Isotopes: Deuterium & Tritium
5:16 - Carbon Isotopes: Carbon 14
8:47 - Helium Isotopes: Helium 3 & 4 
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What did you learn about Isotopes?
A lot😊
Everything Neil said was new knowledge acquired
I thought I remembered from school that all elements are isotopes. Meh, the things that happen when you get old😢
I always wondered why the atoms degrade at a measurable pace.
Why wouldn't it all happen at once or all happen quickly then slowly or not happen at all and then happen?
@@Trumpstinks probability, it's more likely for it to degrade smoothly than for every atom to be more in sync with each other
Out of the hundreds of carbon dating explanations I've heard, this is the _first time_ anyone has answered a question I've always had: How do we date something if all Carbon-14 is continually decaying everywhere? And Neil's answer is simple in its two parts: 1) The environment continually makes more such that the ratio is relatively stable by replenishing the decayed atoms, and 2) Living things replenish their internal stock of carbon up until, obviously, they die. Thank you, Neil.
Yes, the chain is very interesting. Nitrogen 14 in the atmosphere receives a neutron from cosmic rays wich kicks off a proton from the nucleus and turns it into Carbon 14. Plants absorb by photosynthesis, everyone eats plants or animals that eat plants, so everyone ends up with Carbon 14. Things die, and for thousands of years we can date them by measuring the Carbon 14 left. Some people are pretty damn smart.
If it wasn’t obvious I have bad news…
@@andrewdenzov3303😂😂 you’re not good
Never tried to be good. And if one interested enough in c14 dating to get some understanding on subject it’s pity that he needs pseudo humor to understand subject
@@andrewdenzov3303is this you, Wednesday? Oops, pseudo humour I reckon...
If I had had teachers this good I wouldn’t be here at my age finally learning something so basic. Thank you Neil!
We need a better system where teaching jobs are the highest paid profession
My teachers were pretty good. The problem was me. Although, wait, you never learned what an isotope is in school?
@@bsadewitz I didn't learn what an isotope is in school
I know I may not be smarter. But I always feel smarter after watching these videos. This is a good one.
Yes, I know what you mean about feeling more intelligent after watching Neil's videos and it's a good feeling.
@@debranelson1987dude frrr it fills me with so much happiness to learn from people who genuinely are excited to talk about this stuff
Because you are learning 😂 dont doubt yourself. Im 22, failed highschool, and I'm learning more here then from school. Mostly because Neil and Chuck make learning way more fun. I feel like I would have loved learning if I had one of them as teachers.
You should keep doing these types of episodes, fun, existing, informative. I wish my chemistry teacher was like you
Agreed. I'm sitting here at 40 going, "Aha!" Wish I was able to wrap my head around it back in high school.
Agreed. However I’m not sure I would’ve been ready for that in HS. My chemistry teacher hated me, and I don’t think I can blame him much now … was too busy weighing myself on the gram scales and using bunsen burners as flamethrowers 😂
One of the questions from my chemistry test was literally to date a rock from a volcano
Whoever's been editing your videos lately has been killing it. 👏🏻 Thanks for another great video, Neil and Chuck!
That is why I love this show, such simple explanation how it actually works the whole carbon dating.
What a great explanation of isotopes of elements. Thank you.
Love this! I had forgotten how this worked, and occasionally it would come up, and I would think to myself that I had to look up how this worked bc I didn't remember. Thanks for the explanation! 😊
Neil has a knack for explaining topics we've learned somewhere before and think about vaguely, but don't really understand/have forgotten. Then he sprinkles in some new facts and creates a connection we hadn't previously made.
That's what I love about Startalk. You're always learning and thinking about things in new ways.
I will just start carbon dating instead of asking for IDs
Lolol
real
Naw, you can't carbon date it if it's living. Don't you watch Young Sheldon?
@@ChristinaGuzik teeth
7:48 please watch the whole thing. lol
Freaking love you guys. Always excited to learn something new, and am never disappointed 😊
Just before the end of the year, I was teaching this at class: nuclear desintegration and reactions, and Carbon-14 dating is a great source of exercises. As usual, you've explained it gorgeously.
Ive been trying to learn about chemistry online and this was a great supplement about isotopes. In orher videos they just say the words and gloss over what they mean. It helps a lot to have a further explanation about specific things like this.
Love the visuals! Very helpful, I finally learned how carbon-14 works. Well done, everybody.😊 I'm re-reading Oliver Sacks' book "Uncle Tungsten" and am in the chapter of his love, as a young boy, for the elements, that never ceased his whole life. It was hard to imagine being so passionate about these but your video here helped me to see how that's possible. Thanks!
Putting that on my reading list, thanks!!
Great vid.
I prefer these short explainers to the comedic/interrupting the guest shows.
Thanks for having these available StarTalk.
I admire you so much Neil! Happy New Year for you and Chuck 🎉🎉🎉
Please, please: No background "music" while talking
I know for non native speaker music disturb to get it understand, you should on subtitle ,,,But it makes the things more dramatic,,helps as lot of people focus more.
I know for non native speaker music disturb to get it understand, you should on subtitle ,,,But it makes the things more dramatic,,helps as lot of people focus more.
I agree better without music.
No matter the mother-tongue
great editing! I think this really helps the explainer videos get some extra value
Really enjoying watching your vids at work. Good stuff!! Always learning 🌟
this was great, i vaguely understood how carbon dating worked but never had it explained properly, thanks. Isotopes and compounds are fascinating 😁
This video is extremely helpful, clear, and easy to understand.
Thanks Doc Tyson and Chuck Nice for this explainer. The visuals make it a lot more fun. I felt like I was back in science class.
When one carbon atom really likes another carbon atom they start dating... 😅
This is a very clear and helpful explanation of some complex phenomena, allowing only interpretations and perspectives to conflict. 👍👍
I am no chemist. But an old friend Iv known for 23 years
Gave me an old chemistry book his daughter studied from when she was young in high school. I left it in my basement on a shelf for roughly 10 years. Then one day during a bout of unemployment with nothing to do in boredom I came across it and began to read it some of it is hard and boring I'm no
Mathematician but I read all the articles of interest.
I am a mechanic retired now but back when I learned electronics and how every thing worked. But when I read that chemistry book I learned alot more about electricity it was amazing what I learned from that book. The how's and why. Simply amazing.
A very good explainer video. This is how it should be done!! Shoutout to the ones who made the graphics alongside the explainer !!
Great explanation - loved it!
A group is visiting a natural history museum. When their guide reaches at some very interesting dinosaur fossil, he says
"This is a 180million and 12 years old fossil".
Someone from the audience asks "Hey, how do you know it's 180million AND TWELVE???"
"Well, I was told it was 180 million years old when I first came here, and I came 12 years ago"
Thank you so much! ❤ Super helpful and interesting!
This was very informative, thank you!
This is a really well presented, entertaining and informative short lecture on isotopes. Fun related fact: as Dr. Tyson alluded to, the man made nuclear tests added so much Carbon-14 to the environment that it changed these ratios, and the ratios went back to the natural levels when atomic testing stopped. Scientists can actually look for nuclear bomb era testing levels of C-14 in tissue and make all sorts of interesting conclusions as there is sort of a nuclear fingerprint. One conclusion reached by examining nuclear bomb C-14 levels in Greenland sharks was that they have extremely long lifespans - 390 years or even longer. By looking at the amount of nuclear bomb era C-14 levels in the molars of human skeletons we can estimate the age of the person when they died to within 1 or 2 years. So it's possible to make conclusions not just how long ago something died, but how old it was when it did.
Great talk! Thanks Professor!
Happy New Year!!!
So you explained about Carbon-14 and the decay. But if you age something by home much decayed, how did you know how much was there to start?
That's what have always boggling my mind. Because as Neil said the STARTING level has always been changing.
The amount doesn't matter. It's the ratio of the carbon isotopes that matters. Carbon dating works because C14 is created at a reliable rate in the ionosphere compared to its natural decay. So before we started testing nuclear bombs 1945, the ratio of C14:C12 in carbon dioxide was predictable. Since plants get their carbon from the atmosphere , their C12:C14 ratio matches the atmospheric ratio so long as they are living and breathing. When the die, they stop breathing and no longer exchange atoms with the environment. Then the C14 decays away at a predictable rate reducing its ratio to the C12 that does not decay. We can measure that ratio, and use some mathematics to determine how long the C14 must hame been decaying to reach that ratio and infer when the plant died.
@@timharig how do we know the rate has always been the same? I believe Neil himself said it's changing.
Something he didn’t go into is that the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14 is the same in every living thing at any given time. Because of the way nature produces carbon 14 in the upper atmosphere, and the effectively identical way carbon 12 and carbon 14 are absorbed into the biosphere. So the ratio of the two at any given time in a living thing is the same as the overall ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 14 on earth in general.
So when scientists do radiocarbon dating they’re concerned with the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14. Now, as Neil alluded to it’s not quite as simple as “5% of the carbon is carbon 14? must 850 years old” (these numbers are for illustrative purposes only).
Why? Because the proportion of carbon 12 to carbon 14 in the environment in general may change over time. Like Neil said, nuclear testing had a significant effect, but it also changes over time for other reasons. Which was proven in the 1960s via tree ring data.
Armed with this data scientists constructed a calibration curve to convert the sample measurements into an actual date. The modern radiocarbon calibration curve includes data from coral, plant macrofossils, rocks and, according to wikipedia, “foraminifera”.
@@vykintasmorkvenas6839 This is a RUclips comment section. It is a simplified explanation. A detailed explanation of of all the accounting done to estimate accuracies based on things like atmospheric variation, contamination, etc. could literally require a book and expert knowledge to understand. It is far beyond the scope of a RUclips comment.
The simplest explanation that I can give you is that carbon dating doesn't happen an an isolated case. It is compared against other samples from similar areas, similar environments, similar time frames, and often correlated with other dating techniques. The more similar and the more verified samples available to compare against, the more accurate and more narrow a samples estimated date is likely to be.
When you get a sample dated, you do not get back a specific date. You receive a confidence interval of the statistically likely dates. Depending how many similar samples were available to help remove confounding variables, the times span could be quite narrow or quite wide.
Somehow, the editing has become even better than before. Excellent stuff 😂 🤗 🥰
Thank you for that clear and succinct explanation.
Awesome lesson about our periodic table of elements 😂!!! Love ya Neil, please keep em commin cause I have a huge thirst for knowledge 😉 😜
Thanks guys ! This was super helpful. Currently talking about this in my Anthropology class and was wondering what the heck it is LOL fascinating
Love the visuals it help a lot. Thank you.
Superb,
I havn't studied science as a subject in my graduation and post studies.
but lemme tell you, I was always interested, (can't get it coz' am poor at maths.) THIS IS THE BEST VIDEP TO TEACH ME THE CONCEPT OF ANY ONE PART OF SCIENCE - in this case Carbon Dating.
Look forward to get more such videos.
Great Work
This was extremely helpful. Thanks!!
Thank you very much for the great explanation, Neil! You are the best! 😊
These are so good! Some people look at you sideways for even knowing about isotopes smh.
Also, your editor is goated.
I can watch this kind of video all day long! Thank you Neil 🧠👏🏼
I'm glad I watched this video because the isotope stuff I learned back in highschool was beginning to fade from my memory.
Did you guys just change your logo and image this morning? It looks FANTASTIC. I've secretly been hoping for a new logo for a while now 😂
It's so much better when you add pictures and animations to your videos.
Nicely explained. Big Thank you
Chucks unstable reference had me rolling😅
Chuck is the isotope of Neil
I'm digging the background music
Ave Maria; if you didnt already know...🙃
I can never remember how that stuff works! I'm definitely saving this video.
That was such a good lesson! I never really understood carbon 14 dating till now, thank you!
Amazing explanation!
What a great explanation, thank you.
Great source of science, thanks Dr. Tyson and the other gentleman.
Great explanation, thanks
We needed this from you. Thanks
I love this man. Loud and clear❤
Finally an explanation that a dyslexic could comprehend straight away! Thank you!! Super fun to listen to and now I am eager to try and get more understanding on a topic that used to give me anxiety 👍🏼
some say Einstein was dyslapstic
This was excellent, thank you Neil and Chuck. I'm going to seem really smart on day 1 of my intro to radiation physics course. Day 2 maybe not so much...
Interesting and useful, thank you!
I’ve learnt something today. Cheers
I wish my science teachers were more like you Neil. You make it fun to learn science. From grade 7-12, I disliked science class because my teachers were boring. I'm 29 and have learned so much from you.
Agreed, it's great when teachers make stuff interesting.......
Could never get to grips with history at school with all these important dates getting crammed down your throat but when I began working back shift and nightshift, I started watching historical TV programs and wow, I understood it all!
*I think I will remember what I learned today from watching this video for a very long time. Carbon 14’s half life is 5,740 years. I have learned so much more from watching StarTalk videos than what I learned from my high school physics class*
and how was that halflife determined?
@@wsxcde21
*You may want to ask CLIFF CLAVIN* *He knows many things, including his Buffalo Herd-Beer Theory that he explained quite well*. *Google it*
ניל דגריי כל מה שהינך מלמד אפילו שהם חזרה על הנלמד מדהים בפשטות ההסבר. מרצה מעולה והומניסט . תודה רבה .
I’m a nuclear medicine technologist. Always cool when Dr. Tyson visits my neck of the woods.
Maybe it helps to point out that C14 is generated from the N14 in the air, and thus is converted into sugar by green plants via photosynthesis. The C14 we humans ingest is already in the process of decaying, and continues to decay in our body, so the age we determine from C14 dating is not exactly our age, but the age of the leaf or fruit of the plant we ate (or the animal ate which meat we eat), and whose organic matter our body converts into its own organic matter.
Thus the presence of cosmic rays and atmospheric nitrogen is what in the end causes C14 to be present in organic matter and not in fossil matter, because the fossil carbon was not exposed to atmospheric nitrogen converted into radioactive carbon for a very long time.
GREAT CONTENT
Carbon dating is a hotline where coal, diamonds and graphite gather to have a good time.
Fun learning experience.
I f**king love these videos. Thank you for teaching me❤ You’re never too old to learn.
Nicely explained
As someone who create video, that mini dolly zoom when Neil reveals carbon isotopes delights my soul
Thank you for took me to my school days. A perfect show for who love science and for those who hates.
Beautifully explained 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Mate will watch all your video's you are the man thanks
As always great video keep it up ❤
I'd love to see an explainer on precious metals; rarity, what makes them desirable, useful in scientific applications, industrial ones, emissions even. I know Neil has an 18kt gold Moonwatch, fitting for a cosmologist, he knows a thing or two about them. I find them fascinating from a materials/ elemental point of view. I'm not a $5, its a cup of coffee, Patreon member but I thought I'd ask.
Oh dude NileRed has some cool videos on how metals and other weird stuff works in a scientific setting I 100% but he doesn’t do the nuanced explanations like on startalk
2:36 i always love these sudden genius comedy moments in startalk 😂
every time i watch these two my anxiety disagrees
Da Tyson pulling in clutch with this refresher so I can listen to that JRE podcast with the mammoth bones
Outstanding video! What are your thoughts on nuclear rearrangements to reduce radioactive waste?
Brilliantly explained.
Question please...
It's my understanding that Carbon14 atoms are formed by the interaction of cosmic rays to form the isotope.
If the rate of cosmic ray saturation is based on the magnetic shield of Earth which fluctuates in intensity, and we havent been monitoring the magnetic shield for that long, how can we be positive about the decay rate?
Also...doesnt that also hold true for other radiometric dating processes?
Wow😮 a lot of knowledge 😊
-What did the chemist say when he found two new isotopes of helium?
HeHe
-Are there any good jokes about sodium?
Na
a couple exist about Uranium 😁
Good, fun, and educational.
Learning more physics and chemistry from you than I did in high school 😢
Carbon-14 and the link to half life is how dating archeoligy finds. Thx much I don't think I was ever toughts back in school days. Big thx and good work on educational science. Even to young old adult sush as I, it bring lot of enlightening!
Thank you for using a thumbnail on this video that accurately represents its content.
The Great Explainer! 👏🏻
Neil is one of the best for me... His explanation is clear and concise. Easy to understand.
This is best carbon dating chapter of my life 🤣
Thanks!
Learned more in 10 minutes watching this than I did in a whole year of chemistry class
Good vid
a useful intuition about decay that has a half life, is that it is 1 a random process whether fundamentally random or not, and two there is no difference from one second to the next in the probability of decay related to entropy. take for example the branch of a dead tree, if it is decaying continually, at some point it will break, but as time passes, it will get into a less and less structurally sound state, this is not how nuclear decay works, a tree branch does not have a similar kind of half life, only sort of over very short time scales to to speak, you can do statistics on tree branches if you are careful about the material strength and shape and so on, and the probability of them breaking would be on average some like some very long half life, that gets shorter and shorter very suddenly some time after the tree dies. so a process like nuclear decay if it is to be modeled by some process happening to a structure, it would basically have to be some structure that is preserved more or less exactly on average over time, but that can fluctuate into different configurations randomly or quasi randomly and the rarity of a state corresponding to a decay is what would give you the half life, if you had a million, you expect one to decay every so often, then you turn that expectation for short times into a rate of having half of them decay, and there you go, it is important to keep the factoid that the process is not some progressing decay over time until the last straw breaks the camels back, but a kind of random jiggling of the structure that sometimes leads to decay, that is characteristic of randomness that doesn't change from moment to moment, like trowing a die and hoping for a 6, you are just as likely to get it on the first throw as the millionth.
I'm so old that archaeologists want to date me.
Just to be clear, you don't get C-14 by whacking two neutrons into C-12, but by throwing a neutron at N-14 and knocking out a proton. (That's not exactly what happens, but I challenge anyone to explain it better in less than 50 words.) The C-14 then decays back to N-14 by emitting an electron and an antineutrino.
Love it❤
Thanks a lot
loved the video. Still have somes questions though. What does it mean for an atom to be stable or unstable? Why does it matter that carbon 14 is unstable?
An atom is unstable if it is radioactive. That is, over time, it will emit radiation as it turns into something else, in this case Nitrogen-14. The half-life of a particular radioactive element is how long it takes for half of a particular amount of that element to decay.
if only my school teacher had such talent of teaching.... I would have become a scientist
Good stuff but woulda been cooler to go into the potential and current use cases of Helium 3