Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Tsk Tsk, History Channel

Tonight, we checked out the History Channel's "How the Earth was Made" (2009).  It was humming along until this line about Carbon dating caught my attention "Because of its molecular structure, Carbon 14 decays after a plant has died and ...."   Ouch!  Molecular structure?  First off, Carbon-14 is an atom, a radioactive isotope of regular carbon and the whole point is that is binds in molecules just like regular Carbon 12. 

This is as if a show about English history off-handedly described Shakespeare's "Othello" as a Sonnet.  Tsk Tsk...