1 / 7

Determination of the Age of the Earth (Second Method)

Determination of the Age of the Earth (Second Method). Radioactivity in the Earth’s Crust. One can find the age of a rock by measuring the amount of radioactivity In particular one is interested in the daughter decay series K 40 half life (T 1/2 1277 million years)

Download Presentation

Determination of the Age of the Earth (Second Method)

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. Determination of the Age of the Earth (Second Method)

  2. Radioactivity in the Earth’s Crust • One can find the age of a rock by measuring the amount of radioactivity • In particular one is interested in the daughter decay series • K40 half life (T1/2 1277 million years) • Isotopic Abundance 0.118 % • Age of earth about 4 billion years

  3. Second Method Uranium and Actinium decay series • U238 T1/2 = 4468 million years • U235 T1/2 = 703.8 million years • Both of these isotopes are not made in stars. They are “Transuranic Elements” • Probably made during big bang and in Supernovae explosions • Assume original abundance of these two isotopes were the same

  4. Radioactive Decay • Radioactive Decay is a logarithmic decay • N is the number of atoms after a time t • N0 is the original number of atoms at time 0 • is the decay constant t is the elapsed time  = lne2 /T1/2 = 1/(1.44 T1/2) (Can be either years or seconds)

More Related