<h1 id="carbon">Carbon<a aria-hidden="true" class="anchor-heading icon-link" href="#carbon"></a></h1>
Carbon is so necessary to life due to its remarkable capacity for forming chains and rings and other complex molecular architectures.
Carbon enters the food web via photosynthesis when plants extract it from CO2 in the atmosphere. 
<ul>
<li>All the carbon in the atmosphere ultimately comes from plants, and it is continually being recycled back into the atmosphere when we breathe out and die.</li>
</ul>
Most of the carbon in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide is carbon-12, which is not radioactive. However, 1 out of every trillion carbon atoms is carbon-14, which is radioactive.
<ul>
<li>carbon-14 has a <a href="/notes/lyjai8xnibbz1h56yffseuw#half-life">half-life</a> of 5730 years, and it decays to nitrogen-14.</li>
<li>plant biochemistry doesn't care if it's getting carbon-12 or carbon-14.</li>
</ul>
The clock of carbon 14 is "zeroed" at the time that an organism dies as the inflow of fresh carbon 14 is cut off
The ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in living things is the same as what’s found in the atmosphere. Once an organism dies, the carbon 14 starts to decay to nitrogen 14 and thus the ratio changes. Eventually, the only carbon left will be carbon 12 (more accurately, the carbon 14 will become too small to measure)
<ul>
<li>therefore, the ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 14 can be used to calculate the time that has elapsed since the death of an organism</li>
</ul>
Carbon dating is only accurate to the nearest century or so

Carbon

thoughts-on


Welcome to my Second Brain! Here you'll find thoughts, lessons, facts and any other interesting musings that I've come across or thought up over the years. A lot of what I have gathered is originally from the minds of others, while some of it originates from myself. Some notes may contain misinformation, though I try to be rigorous with my additions.

What I have here does not necessarily reflect my thoughts and views. I collect information not based upon whether I agree with it or not, but rather when I determine it to contain some value that can be served in the future.  

You can think of this collection of inter-linked notes as my personal wiki.

This Dendron notebook is the sister vault to the tech-focused [Digital Garden](https://tech.kyletycholiz.com)

## Tags
Throughout the Second Brain, I have made use of tags, which give semantic meaning to the pieces of information.

- `ex.` - Denotes an *example* of the preceding piece of information
- `spec:` - Specifies that the preceding information has some degree of *speculation* to it, and may not be 100% factual. Ideally this gets clarified over time as my understanding develops. I try to go back after I have better understood the topic and clear out the notes of `spec:` tags
- `anal:` - Denotes an *analogy* of the preceding information. When I can, I attempt to link concepts to others that I have previously learned.
- `mn:` - Denotes a *mnemonic* to aid in memorization
- `expl:` - Denotes an *explanation*

## Resources
### UE (Unexamined) Resources
Often, I come across sources of information that I believe to be high-quality. They may be recommendations or found in some other way. No matter their origin, I may be in a position where I don't have the time to fully examine them (and properly extract notes), or I may not require the information at that moment in time. In cases like these, I will add reference to a section of the note called **UE Resources**. The idea is that in the future when I am ready to examine them, I have a list of resources that I can start with. This is an alternative approach to compiling browser bookmarks, which I've found can quickly become untenable.

### E (Examined) Resources
Once a resource has been thoroughly examined and has been mined for notes, it will be moved from *UE Resources* to *E Resources*. This is to indicate that (in my own estimation), there is nothing more to be gained from the resource that is not already in the note.

### Resources
This heading is for inexhaustible resources. 
- A prime example would be a quality website that continually posts articles- another example would be a tool, such as software that measures frequencies in a room to help acoustically treat it.
