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Earth Science Education
Age Dating
Determining the Age of Rocks and Fossils, University of California, Berkeley. This 9-12-grade activity introduces students to age dating with exercises using relative and absolute dating. The idea of radioactive decay and half lives, a type of absolute dating, is shown through an activity using M&M's candy and graph paper.
Sequencing Time, University of California, Berkeley. This 5-12-grade activity lets students place parts of their own life story into a time line so that they can better understand how geologic time is reconstructed by scientists.
Who's on First, University of California, Berkeley. This 5-12-grade activity introduces students to the idea of sequencing information in overlapping data sets and the Principle of Superposition, which is a core concept in relative dating.
Relative Dating, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan. These on-line lecture notes include colorful diagrams of the Principles of Superposition, Original Horizontality, Inclusions, Deformation, Cross-cutting Relationships, and Fossil Successions. A section on Absolute Dating follows and includes information about correlations, and different types of dating methods. There is also background material about isotopes, half lives, and radiometric decay.
Radiometric Dating and the Geologic Time Scale, The Talk Origins Archive. This group is dedicated to providing information about the scientific method as it concerns the idea of evolution in the Creation/Evolution debate. The site provides background information about stratigraphic principles and relative time, biostratigraphy (using fossils for relative dating), and radiometric dating. The site also provides fact sheets on the age of the Earth and isochron dating.
Relative Dating Laboratory, Georgia Perimeter College. This site offers an on-line college introductory lesson about relative dating. The introduction contains useful background information concerning relative dating, the Principles of Superposition, Original Horizontality, Original Lateral Continuity, Intrusive Relationships, Cross-cutting Relationships, and Fossil Successions. It also includes discussions of bed contacts, types of unconformities and provides a series of block-diagram exercises to unravel by relative dating (answers are not provided).
Radiometric Dating, Georgia Perimeter College. This site offers an on-line college introductory lesson about radiometric dating. The introduction contains useful background information concerning radiometric dating, examples of parent and daughter isotopes, half lives, radioactive decay, examples of minerals you can date, Carbon-14 dating methods, and fission-track dating methods.
Geologic time, U.S. Geological Survey. This online version of their informative booklet contains short, content explanations about relative time, major geologic time divisions, index fossils for use in age dating, radiometric dating and the age of the earth.
Geochronology, U.S. Geological Survey. Content information about absolute and relative dating methods used by the U.S. Geological Survey
Geological Engineering 188 , Dr. Malcolm Reeves, University of Alaska. On-line class notes for a introductory college geological engineering class. Part of the slide show (beginning at this URL page) provides well-illustrated examples of stratigraphic principles for relative dating, correlation, methods of absolute dating, a graph to display the relationship between of parent and daughter isotope ratios and half lives, an isotope diagram illustrating the conversion of Rubidium-87 to Strontium-87, and a table that compares the half lives of different elements commonly used in radiometric dating.
Radiometric dating , Wikipedia. Content information from on-line encyclopedia that explains various
See also Geologic Time Scales
See also Earth History
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