Abstract:
Accelerate mass spectrometry (AMS) has been used to the measurement of specific activity I (
36Cl/Cl) of high purity AgCl made of "inducing-adsorbed"
36Cl (and Cl) collected and purified from the surface of young marine sediments. Sediment age t was calculated from closed specific activity
I0 (
36Cl/Cl) of sediment grain based on the radioactive decay law
I=
I0e
-λt. The study shows that the specific activity
I0 of closed
36Cl in earlier marine sediments has linear relationship with latitude.
36Cl specific activity
IL from typical and uncontaminated seawater of the Pacific Ocean (4°18'N,161°09'E) surface was measured by AMS and the result was 99.34±10.30. And taking account of latitude factor, the proportionality constant of specific activity-yield (
μ) was obtained as 23.65238.
36Cl specific activity of two sediments grains and a manganese nodule from seabed has measured and the ages of sedimentation for the samples are 83.2×10
4 a, 74.0×10
4 a, and 17.6×10
4 a respectively. The calculation method of
I0 is of scientific foundation and accessibility and it can provide the exact sedimentation ages and explain the correlation of marine sediment layers.