Velocity Web Site - Attention teachers: The Dating Game


	\| Edition homepage \| ANSTO website \| Subscribe \| Send to a friend \| September 2006


	Neutrons put the brakes on stress
	What has biology ever done for me?
	Take a deep (radioactive) breath
	Ancient fish heads touch a nerve
	Dog sniffs out sheep poo parasites
	Attention teachers: The Dating Game

The Dating Game shows how scientists are using ice cores to track climate change

Bits & pieces

Maggots in a dead body can be used to work out how long ago someone died - the length of maggots indicates how old they are

Carbon dating uses the naturally occurring isotope carbon-14 to work out the age of objects containing carbon. Every living thing constantly exchanges carbon-14 with its environment, but once it dies the exchange stops. The amount of carbon-14 gradually decreases through radioactive decay; and ratios of carbon isotopes in the object gives an indication of age

ANSTO carbon dates all sorts of objects for archaeologists, museums, universities and other researchers. See other stories on ANSTO's carbon dating:
	-	Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism
	-	The Mahogany Ship: Just a Piece of Wood?
	-	Sustaining Aboriginal Art.

Attention teachers: The Dating Game

Want to know how to get a date? The Powerhouse Museum's Dating Game may be the show for you! It opens with a murder scene and a body full of maggots, but don't fear - this isn't a show about romance gone wrong. The Dating Game is, in fact, a new educational program about the science of finding out how old objects are or how long ago events occurred.

How do CSI officers work out how long someone's been dead?
What about someone who's been dead for thousands of years?
How does carbon dating work?
What's the role of radiation in dating objects?
What can tree rings tell us?
How can air trapped in ice cores in Antarctica tell us about the climate hundreds of years ago?

The Dating Game answers these questions and more in the Powerhouse Museum's Experimentations Demonstration Space. The forty minute interactive and entertaining show explains the scientific concepts behind these processes and takes you into the carbon dating labs at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to show you how carbon dating works.

Currently aimed at school students, especially stages 5/6 science, the show can also be adapted for junior secondary science and secondary history, and may eventually be available for the public in a slightly different format.

Starting with popular forensic examples as seen in TV crime shows:

the methodology of radio carbon dating is explained
the audience is introduced to facets of modern science, medicine and industry that rely on radiation
tracking climatic change and our impact on the Greenhouse Effect is explored using an actual ice core sample.

With plenty of audience participation and a multi-media presentation, The Dating Game is an ideal way to introduce students to the science of dating objects, biological samples and the climate of eras past. The Dating Game aims to develop students' skills in critical analysis of information, and introduces them to:

the concepts of radiation
isotopes of elements
half lives of radioactive nuclei
carbon dating.

Film sequences of the ANSTO carbon chemistry laboratories and ANTARES (ANSTO's particle accelerator that measures how much carbon-14 is present in samples for carbon dating) are included in the show. ANSTO scientists star in the film, explaining how samples are prepared and processed for radiocarbon dating.

The Dating Game is one of the first shows to run in the Powerhouse Museum's reopened Experimentations Theatrette and provides greater depth to the science exhibitions in the museum.

Cost of the show is $6 per student which includes museum entry, and groups as small as 15 students can be booked in. For bookings see The Powerhouse website or phone 02 9217 0222.