1 / 17

Absolute Ages of Rock

Absolute Ages of Rock. Mr. Perez. Important vocabulary. Isotopes Radioactive decay Half-life Radiometric dating Uniformitarianism. Absolute Ages. Absolute age is the age, in years, of a rock or other object. Examples: How old are you? How old is your house? How old is your book bag?

darci
Download Presentation

Absolute Ages of Rock

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Absolute Ages of Rock Mr. Perez

  2. Important vocabulary • Isotopes • Radioactive decay • Half-life • Radiometric dating • Uniformitarianism

  3. Absolute Ages • Absolute age is the age, in years, of a rock or other object. • Examples: • How old are you? • How old is your house? • How old is your book bag? • How old is your pet? • How old is your sibling?

  4. Radioactive Decay • Atoms are made up of: • Nucleus- central region • Includes the protons (+) and neutrons (0) • Electrons- cloud surrounding center (-) • The number of protons(+) determines the identity of the element • The number of neutrons (0) determines the form of the element (aka isotope)

  5. Radioactive Decay • Some isotopes are unstable and break down into other isotopes and particles • We call the above process radioactive decay

  6. Radioactive Decay- Alpha and Beta Decay Both types of decay form a new isotope

  7. Radiometric Decay- Half Life • Each parent isotope decays (breaks down) into its daughter isotope at a certain rate • Based on this decay rate, it takes a certain period of time for one half of the parent isotope to decay to its daughter product • The half-life of an isotope is the time it takes for half of the atoms in the isotope to decay. • Example- It takes carbon-14 5,730 years for half of its atoms to turn into nitrogen-14. Then, it takes another 5,730 years for half of the remaining carbon-14 atoms to turn into nitrogen-14, and so on… THINK OF EXPONENTS! 23 = 8, 32 = 9, 44 = 256

  8. Radioactive Decay- Half-life • Fill in the following table using this information: • Mr. Perez has 100g of carbon-14. After 5,730 years, how many grams of carbon-14 will still be carbon-14? After 2? After 3?...

  9. Radiometric Dating

  10. Radiometric Dating • By measuring the ratio of parent isotope to daughter product in a mineral AND knowing the half-life of the parent, you can calculate the absolute age of a rock • This is called radiometric dating • A scientist must decided which parent isotope to use when measuring the age of a rock. • If it’s old, the scientist will use an isotope with a long half-life • Example: potassium-40 takes 1.25 billion years to decay to argon-40 • To avoid errors, conditions must be met for ratios to give a correct indication of age: • The rock being studied must retain ALL of the argon-40 that produced by the decay of potassium-40 • It cannot contain any contamination of daughter product from other sources

  11. Radiometric Dating- Radiocarbon Dating • Carbon-14 is useful for dating bones, wood and charcoal up to 75,000 years old. • Living things take in carbon from the environment to build their bodies • Most of this carbon is carbon-12, but some is carbon-14 • The radio of these two isotopes is always the same • After an organism dies, the carbon-14 decays slowly • By determining the amounts of isotopes in a sample, scientists can evaluate how much the isotope ratio differs from that in the environment

  12. Radiometric Dating- Radiocarbon Datin

  13. Radiometric Dating- • Age Determinations • Rocks that can be radiometrically dated are mostly IGNEOUS and METAMORPHIC rock • Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by carbon-14 because they are made up of particles eroded from older rocks • The Oldest Known Rocks • Using radiometric dating, the oldest rocks on Earth are about 3.96 billion years old • The Earth is about 4.5-4.6 billion years old

  14. Uniformitarianism • James Hutton (Scottish scientist in the 1700s) • Estimated that the Earth is much older than we think • Uniformitarianism- principle that states that Earth’s processes occurring today are similar to those that occurred in the past • “The present is the key to the past” • Today, scientists recognize that Earth has been shaped by two types of change • Slow, everyday processes that take place over millions of years • Violent and unusual events

  15. Videos • http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-14.htm • http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=181054&title=Radioactive_decay

  16. Resources • Florida Science Grade 7 Glencoe Science & McGraw Hill Publishing • Google Images

More Related