Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon. Any carbon 14 that was made at the time the earth was formed is now almost all gone. Carbon 14 is continuously made from high energy electromagnetic radiation hitting nitrogen atoms in the ozone layer of the earth. This carbon 14 when taken into plants as CO2 will also be taken into animals. We can find out how much carbon 14 that normally is in a living plant or animal and from there we can find the actual amount of carbon 14 left in a plant or animal long dead. We can get a very good idea of how long ago that plant or animal was living from the amount of carbon 14 remaining in the dead body. This process is called "carbon dating." The stable, non-radioactive isotopes of carbon play no part in this. As a whole element, carbon has a more or less fixed proportion of the various carbon isotopes. For this reason, we can determine a weighted average of the isotopes for all elements. On a periodic chart you may see some atomic weights that are integers or in parentheses. These are usually on the very large or very rare or very radioactive elements. That is not really an integer atomic weight, but the atomic weight has been estimated to the nearest integer.