RockOn 10 GEOSC10

You start with 400 parent atoms of a particular radioactive type, which decays to give stable offspring. You wait just long enough for three half lives to pass. You should expect to have how many parent atoms remaining (on average):

50 After one half-life, you've gone from 400 parents to 200; after a second half-life you go from 200 parents to 100, and after a third half-life you go from 100 parents to 50. (Typical studies of radioactive decay use many more atoms, to avoid statistical fluctuations, but the question says "on average", so we asked you about 400 rather than 400,000,000,000,000 to make the math easier.)

Two yellow lines have been drawn on the picture by the instructional team. These lines follow an interesting surface, which separate flat-lying sedimentary rocks, on top, from slanting sedimentary rocks beneath. This surface is:

A great unconformity, with sedimentary rocks above resting on older sedimentary rocks below. John Wesley Powell, of the United States Geological Survey, and the leader of the first boat trip through the Grand Canyon, called the feature marked by the yellow lines "The Great Unconformity". It separates horizontal Paleozoic sedimentary rocks, above, from inclined Precambrian sedimentary rocks, below.

Which is the correct age progression, from older (first) to younger (last)?

C, D, E, F, B The package of sediments C, D, E, F is upside-down, as shown by the footprints and mud cracks, so C is oldest, and F the youngest of these. B is above the unconformity above all of C, D, E, and F, so is the youngest of these five.

Which is older:

Fault I Fault I is cut by fault J, so is older than J. Fault J is cut by unconformity K so is older than K. Unconformity K is cut by intrusion G so is older than G, and intrusion G is cut by fault H so is older than H. Hence, fault I is the oldest on this list.

Which is the youngest fault:

H I is cut by J, so I is older than J. And with reference to K, both I and J can be shown to be older than H.

Geological evidence based on several radiometric techniques has provided a scientifically well-accepted age for the Earth. Represent that age of the Earth as the 100-yard length of a football field, and any time interval can be represented as some distance on the field. (So something that lasted one-tenth of the age of the Earth would be ten yards, and something that lasted one-half of the age of the Earth would be fifty yards.) On this scale, how long is written history?

Just over the thickness of a sheet of paper. If the 4.6 billion years of Earth history are 100 yards, then the few thousand years of written history are just one-millionth of that history, just over the thickness of a sheet of paper.

In the photograph above, a portion of cliff about 30 feet high is shown. From what location in the Grand Canyon did Dr. Alley take this image?

Near the bottom, where the river has cut through rocks that were cooked, squeezed, and partially melted deep in an old mountain range. This is the Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite, rocks from the heart of a mountain range. The river is just barely out of the picture to the bottom.

In age dating, geologists use:

Radiometric techniques and layer-counting for absolute dating of events that happened in the last 100,000 years, and other radiometric techniques for absolute dating of much older events. If you want an absolute date (number of years) rather than older/younger, you can count layers for young things, or use radiometric techniques for young things or for old ones.

In the two pictures above, I and II, show traces of former life in rocks from the Grand Canyon. Each is "typical";the rocks near sample I contain fossils similar to those shown in sample I, and the rocks near sample II contain fossils similar to those shown in sample II. It is likely that:

Sample I is from higher in the cliffs of the Grand Canyon, and sample II is from much lower, nearer to the river. Sample 1 shows shells from complex creatures including trilobites and snails, from the Supai Group far up the side of the Canyon.

What is accurate about the scientific results learned by counting tree rings?

Study of tree rings and associated geology shows that the Earth is more than 12,429 years old. The longest continuous tree-ring record is 12,429 years, but that was published a few years ago, the trees grew in soil that was already there, and there is lots of older wood around. So, the tree rings show that the Earth is more than 12,429 years. But, we don't have overlapping trees back to the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago, so tree rings do not show that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

Which is not accurate about the Grand Canyon, in Arizona:

The oldest rocks are on top, with younger ones beneath, as shown by all of the footprints being upside-down in the rocks of the canyon walls. There are some folded rocks in the heart-of-a-mountain-range metamorphics at the bottom, but otherwise, everything is right-side up. All the other possible answers here are correct.

The picture above shows a very hard piece of rock about six inches across, in the Grand Canyon. The surface of the rock looks rather different from the surfaces of many other rocks.What made this odd-looking surface?

The river, which blasted the rock with sand- and silt-laden water during floods; this shows that even hard rocks can be eroded by rivers. The Canyon was carved by the Colorado River. Glaciers have not been there, and while wind and faults can change the appearance of rocks, none makes something like this river-polished rock, as you saw in one of the Grand Canyon V-Trips.

The age of the Earth can be estimated in many ways. Which statement below is most accurate (remember that uniformitarian calculations involve looking at the thickness and type of sedimentary rocks, and similar things, but do NOT include radiometric dating or counting of annual layers)?

Uniformitarian calculations show that the Earth is more than about 100 million years old, and radiometric techniques tell us how much older.

Which is younger:

The tree. The tree is growing on intrusion G, which can be shown to be younger than all of the others.

You are dating a lava flow by the potassium-argon system. However, the offspring in this system are leaking out of the minerals. Which is accurate?

You will think that the lava flow is younger than it really is, but you will be able to detect the error by comparing concentrations of offspring from the edges and centers of grains. Argon-40 leakage will make the lava flow appear young even if the flow is old; however, the edges of grains will lose more argon-40 than will the centers, pointing to the source of the error.