carbon 13

Also car·bon-13

noun

1. the stable isotope of carbon having an atomic mass number 13, used as a tracer.

Word History and Origins

Origin of carbon 13¹

First recorded in 1940–45

Example Sentences

Recent separate findings indicate that plant leaves receiving more light have a higher density of veins, as well as a higher ratio of a naturally occurring isotope called carbon 13.

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So researchers compare the amount of carbon 14 with the levels of carbon 12 and carbon 13 to determine how much time has passed since an organism perished.

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Carbon 13 usually comes from inorganic sources, such as volcanoes, while carbon 12 is tied to living things.

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There’s carbon 12 and its ever-so-slightly-heavier sibling, carbon 13.

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As far as Knauth is concerned, the simplest explanation for the fact that low levels of carbon 13, those geochemical ghosts of ancient photosynthesizers, coexist with cell-like microfossils is that there were massive amounts of life on land during the Precambrian.

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