A Concept: "Carbon Dating" equivalent technology that can test the age of toning on a coin

mercurydimeguy

Such technology would practically mitigate most of the AT / NT problems, and would probably make real NT coins even more valuable. It would also give buyers and sellers extra assurance when buying and selling such material.

Your thoughts?

Leiana

Carbon dating has to do with the radioactive carbon isotope C14. The known half-life of C14 is how age of an organic material can be determined.

I know sulphur has to do with toning, so if there were a radioactive isotope of sulphur with a substantial half-life, it could indeed be possible.

BTW- There are newer techniques out there that would not require the coin be damaged in any way.

-Amanda

notwilight

Nope, no such similar technology available. Physically, there is no difference.

Now if some doctor used some strange chemical not commonly out there you might find some traces but even then you'd have to take a sample to test for it (no, we don't have scanners like on star trec to look for chemicals yet). would you let them scrape or even swab some of the tone off your coin for a test?

But I'd say the most natural looking toning is done just like natural toning--with hydrogen sulfide but accelerated by some carefully crafted process.

--Jerry

mozin

<< <i>Carbon dating has to do with the radioactive carbon isotope C14. The known half-life of C14 is how age of an organic material can be determined.

I know sulphur has to do with toning, so if there were a radioactive isotope of sulphur with a substantial half-life, it could indeed be possible.

BTW- There are newer techniques out there that would not require the coin be damaged in any way.

-Amanda >>

Please explain these newer techniques.

Leiana

<< <i>Please explain these newer techniques. >>



There is a machine that counts and separates the atoms in a computer requiring no damage to the test subject.

-Amanda

notwilight

Amanda,
Not sure where you've seen such an isotopic analysis counter but they've been around since the 60's if not before. They measure the energy of the emitted radiation, mostly gammas, and fit the profile to know radioactive decay. They are indeed becoming smaller and more common with improed detection and computing technology, now resembling a micorwave oven. However there are a couple of reasons whey they can't help.

1. All 4 naturally occuring isotopes of sulfur are stable (not radioactive).

2. You have to have something happen at the time of the event that you are interested in that will tell you the isotope ratios. In carbon dating the plant or animal died. In sulfur dating, there is nothing happening that would give you a relative abundunace of the isotopes at the time of the "incident". In carbon dating, when the animal/plant dies, it is assumed that the ratio of cabon isotopes in the victim are the same as the atmosphere (carbon dioxide). From that you can back calculate and age by comparing the current carbon isotope ratios and using half lives. The carbon isotope ratio in the atmosphere, although not constant, is continuously replenished by cosmic radiation activation in the upper levels of the atomosphere creating carbon 14.

Probably more than anyone wanted to know about this.

-Sorry,
Jerry

pontiacinf

<< <i>Amanda,
Not sure where you've seen such an isotopic analysis counter but they've been around since the 60's if not before. They measure the energy of the emitted radiation, mostly gammas, and fit the profile to know radioactive decay. They are indeed becoming smaller and more common with improed detection and computing technology, now resembling a micorwave oven. However there are a couple of reasons whey they can't help.

1. All 4 naturally occuring isotopes of sulfur are stable (not radioactive).

2. You have to have something happen at the time of the event that you are interested in that will tell you the isotope ratios. In carbon dating the plant or animal died. In sulfur dating, there is nothing happening that would give you a relative abundunace of the isotopes at the time of the "incident". In carbon dating, when the animal/plant dies, it is assumed that the ratio of cabon isotopes in the victim are the same as the atmosphere (carbon dioxide). From that you can back calculate and age by comparing the current carbon isotope ratios and using half lives. The carbon isotope ratio in the atmosphere, although not constant, is continuously replenished by cosmic radiation activation in the upper levels of the atomosphere creating carbon 14.

Probably more than anyone wanted to know about this.

-Sorry,
Jerry >>



no reason to apologize, great question and answers all around. Im interested in knowing more, I will say the first question when I read the title was "what will it remove from the coin?"

Leiana

Very interesting, Jerry. Carbon dating has been mentioned in my Archaeology class, and that's all I really know about it.

The fact that the sulphur isotopes are stable is unsurprising, yet very good evidence against this ever working. I did not know about any sulphur isotopes, as I stated above.

The fact that the Carbon is dating an event is new to me, but it makes sense. Because toning (should) happen over a long period of time, I can see how such a process would be missaplied in this instance.

Thanks!

-Amanda

Peaceman

Lets say you have it..... You're at a dealer's table at a show.... You pick up a slab... How would you use it?

notwilight

<< <i>

<< <i> Im interested in knowing more, I will say the first question when I read the title was "what will it remove from the coin?" >>



You're right in asking that. Other than radioisotope dating as Amanda has suggested, I'm not aware of any other forensic test that doesn't require material removal. --Jerry

Mesquite

Notwilight,

What you say may be true - I don't recall if S-35 is a naturally occurring isotope or not. However, back in "the old days", before the advent of fluorescently tagged dNTPs, we use to substitute S-35 dATP for P-32 labelled dATP in DNA sequencing reactions. As I recall, S-35 is a beta emmiter with a half-life of 45 - 60 days. With that short a half-life, even if it is a natural isotope, my guess is that it would not be of much use in dating experiments.

Mesquite

What? Did I kill another thread? CRAP!

mozin

<< <i>What? Did I kill another thread? CRAP! >>

No, you did not kill another thread. Many of us are interested in what you young science men know. Keep working on this issue and we will listen, and some of us will respond.

mercurydimeguy

<< <i>Lets say you have it..... You're at a dealer's table at a show.... You pick up a slab... How would you use it? >>



You wouldn't. The TPG's would employ this technology when they inspect a coin. Ostensibly, this is not too different than when coins are sent in for certain type of metallic authentication.

I also agree that in our own finite numismatic world this technology might be etherial. However, I'm almost certain that some reconstituted (currently existing for a different purpose) technology exists that can determine whether the toning on a coin is 5 months old, or 50 years old.

notwilight

<< <i>Notwilight, What you say may be true - I don't recall if S-35 is a naturally occurring isotope or not. However, back in "the old days", before the advent of fluorescently tagged dNTPs, we use to substitute S-35 dATP for P-32 labelled dATP in DNA sequencing reactions. As I recall, S-35 is a beta emmiter with a half-life of 45 - 60 days. With that short a half-life, even if it is a natural isotope, my guess is that it would not be of much use in dating experiments. >>



No, you didn't kill the thread. I went to dinner. S-35 is not naturally occurring (I looked it up). But even if it were, there would have to be some way of knowing the isotope ratios in the sample of sulfer that the culprit used so you can compare it to the sample on the coin. --Jerry

Leiana

But if S-35, although unnatural, only has a half life of a couple months than I do not see how it would be practical.

-Amanda

Mesquite

Correct me if I'm wrong (man, did I really just say that?) but .... atomic masses are weighted averages of all naturally occurring isotopes of an element. If S-35 were natural (which, I believe your statement, it is not) and sufficiently abundant (which is not likely), you would know the ratios. I think in C-14 and H-3 dating the assumption is made that all samples start off with the same ratios. Any difference between the standard ratio (present day natural sample) and the subject sample ratio is due to 1) time of deposition (removal from the "system") and 2) half-life dependent decay of the radioactive species in your sample. Those differences, considering isotope half-life, allow for the estimation of age since deposition. I'm not an expert in materials dating, but I believe that is a fair description of the process. Bottom line? I think you're right S-35 is not a viable choice.

MrEureka

I wonder about a different approach. But before I explain, let me warn you that I know next to nothing about chemistry. Even worse, I'm a vegetarian. That said, when you cook a burger on a frying pan at a low tempurature, it cooks evenly. When you cook it at a high tempurature, it gets nice and crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. I wonder if the same happens with a coin. If you accelerate toning, perhaps you get a thin and crispy layer of toning, compared to a thick, even and deeper penetration of the metals surface that can only happen over extended periods of time. Does this make any sense at all. Remember, I already admitted that I know nothing about chemistry.

Leiana

That certainly makes sense due to the accellerated nature of the toning. And I imagine many coin doctors do not care how "thick" the toning is, but rather how colorful it is.

However, I think I read here that the color percieved as toning has a direct relation with how "thick" the toning is due to refraction or some similar thing.

-Amanda

PS- It's a quarter after 1 here. I will probably look upon this post tomorrow and wonder what I'm talking about.

Conder101

<< <i>Now if some doctor used some strange chemical not commonly out there you might find some traces but even then you'd have to take a sample to test for it (no, we don't have scanners like on star trec to look for chemicals yet). would you let them scrape or even swab some of the tone off your coin for a test? >>


Try rinsing the coin with either distilled water or an organic solvent and then run the rinse through a gas chromatagraph. That should give you some idea of what the compounds are on the coin without damaging the coin or the toning.

mgoodm3

If said toned coin were trapped inside of a lava flow it could be dated with potassium-argon dating.




Although it would have to have happened a while back to work.

ksteelheader

Cost!!

Cost!!

Cost!!

Cost!!

CoinRaritiesOnline

"That said, when you cook a burger on a frying pan at a low tempurature, it cooks evenly. When you cook it at a high tempurature, it gets nice and crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. I wonder if the same happens with a coin. If you accelerate toning, perhaps you get a thin and crispy layer of toning, compared to a thick, even and deeper penetration of the metals surface that can only happen over extended periods of time."

Oh great. Thanks to Andy now I'm getting hungry.

Seriously, thanks for the explanation on how Carbon-14 dating works. I have always wondered about that.

mgoodm3

I'm thinking that isotopic analysis would work well for coins, just for the fact that most of them are accurate only over very long time spans.

If the chemicals used to tone the coin differ in compound from those that occur naturally, you may be able to pick them out as conder suggested.

TomB

I like this thread, it's interesting.

S35 and P32 are still widely used in research labs for producing S35-Met labeled protein and P32-dNTP labeled nucleic acid sequences.

mozin

Keep up this scientific discussion. Maybe eventually someone will reach a conclusion, and explain it to us so we can all understand.

Mesquite

There is quite a lot of work been done (and literature) in the field of electrochemistry. Some analytical chemists spend a lot of time depositing materials on substrates and analyzing the depositions. I'm not one one of those and don't have a clue if the results of any of the more recent experiments would provide any useful information regarding the time factor involved in silver oxidation. Hey airplanenut, when do you sign up for the analytical chemistry course at MIT? We have an assignment for you.

pharmer

I imagine rob790's thread is where many of us read about silver sulfide deposition and toning. TomB's site is linked also, and Tom, if anyone here can figure out a technique for determining AT, it would be you. I also think if it was possible, you would already have done it. Thoughts?

TomB

Personally, I simply don't have the time to invest in this endeavor, unless someone wants to hire me for my time and knowledge.