Key Earth Science Links
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.
Geology and Geologic Time. Geological Society of America. Links to various activities and lesson plans concerning relative and absolute dating.
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.
Chapter 10-Geologic Time. Tarbuck Prentice-Hall Publishing. This website is a book chapter about geologic time. Offers history of age dating, stratigraphic principles, rock correlation, fossil correlations, radiometric dating, and the geologic time scale.
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.
- Isochron Dating. Chris Stassen, Talk Origins Archive. Offers scientific explanations of isochron (radiometric) dating (some technical), equations, graphs, descriptions of methods, discussions of potential problems and methods scientists take to ensure reproducible results and avoid sample contamination.
- Changing Views of the History of the Earth. Richard Harter, Talk Origins Archive. Summary of the history of human perception of geologic time from Genesis in the Bible to modern scientific interpretations. Includes a chronology of significant writings from 1510 to 1998.
- Age of the Earth. Chris Stassen, Talk Origins Archive. Offers scientific explanations and rebuttals to common criticisms of radiometric dating by non-scientists
Foundational methods--Dating methods. U.S. National Museum (Smithsonian Institution). Provides brief overview of (1) relative dating and stratigraphic methods, (2) absolute dating and radiometric dating, including a table with parent to daughter isotopes and half lives of those isotopes commonly used in radiometric dating, (3) paleomagnetics and (4) geologic time.
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
Radiometric dating , Wikipedia. Content information from on-line encyclopedia that explains various