As seen in the table above, there are a wide variety of useful cosmogenic nuclides which can be measured in soil, rocks, groundwater, and the atmosphere. These nuclides all share the common feature of being absent in the host material at the time of formation. These nuclides are chemically distinct and fall into two categories. The nuclides of interest are either noble gases which due to their inert behavior are inherently not trapped in a crystallized mineral or has a short enough half-life such that it has decayed since nucleosynthesis, but a long enough half-life such that it has built up measurable concentrations. The former includes measuring abundances of Kr and Ar whereas the latter includes measuring abundances of Be, C, and Al.