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托福听力背景知识解析:考古学

2018-03-29 11:14:00来源:网络

  通过测定所发掘物质中的碳-14来鉴别时间,原理是利用碳-14的半衰期。

  碳-14是碳的一种具放射性的同位素,于1940年首次被发现。它是透过宇宙射线撞击空气中的氮原子所产生,其半衰期约为5730年,衰变方式是B衰变,碳-14原子转变为氮原子。

  由于其半衰期达5730年,且氮是有机物的元素之一,我们可以根据死亡生物体的体内残余碳-14成分来推断它的存在年龄。

  生物在生存的时候,由于需要呼吸,其体内的碳-14含量大致不变,生物死去后会停止呼吸,此时体内的碳-14开始减少。

  由于碳元素在自然界的各个同位素的比例一直都是很稳定,人们可以透过倾测一件古物的碳-14含量来估计它的大概年龄。

  这种方法称之为碳定年法。

  对应文章 TPO17-L1

  该篇文章讲解确定古代文物的年龄,因为很多文物使用有机材料制作,有机材料里面含碳,通过碳的规律性衰减,在确定碳含量和衰变速率的情况下,从而确定衰变周期和文物年龄。

  原文片段

  Professor:Tom, in your archaeology class, did you talk about radiocarbon dating?

  Tom:Yeah, we did. That had to do with chemical analysis, something to do with measuring the amount of radiocarbon that's left in organic stuff.

  Because we know how fast radiocarbon decays, we can figure out the age of the organic material.

  Professor:The key word there is organic. Is art made of organic material?

  Tom:Well, you said the lady with the hood was carved out of ivory. That's organic.

  Professor:Absolutely. Any other examples?

  Amy:Well, when they did those cave drawings.

  Didn't they use, like charcoal or maybe colors, dyes made from plants?

  Professor:Fortunately, they did, at least some of the time.

  So it turns out that radiocarbon dating works for a lot of prehistoric art.

  But again there's a problem.

  This technique destroys what it analyzes, so you have to chip off bits of the object for testing.

  Obviously we are reluctant to do that in some cases.

  And apart from that, there's another problem.

  The date tells you the age of the material, say, a bone or a tree; the object is made from, but not the date when the artist actually created it.

  So, with radiocarbon dating, we get the maximum possible age for the object, but it could be younger.

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