The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, making it reliable for dating organic matter up to about 60,000 years old, with a formula provided to calculate the conventional radiocarbon age (CRA) of a given sample.Carbon-14 dating works by comparing the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in a sample to that in a living organism, allowing for the determination of the age of formerly living things fairly precisely.
