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1A). How old is a rock if the mineral biotite from the rock has 100,000 K atoms and 100,000 Ar
atoms?
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1B). what if it had instead 125 K atoms and 875 Ar atoms?
.
Pnow=125 and Dnow= 875
Proportion of Porg= Pnow(PNow+DNow)
125 (125/875)= 125/1000 = 0.125
Meaning it has passed 3 half life, so the age of
the rock is= 3x(1.3)= 3.9 billion
2). If one metamorphic rock (that was a granite before metamorphism) gives a K/Ar date of 280 million
years and a U/Pb date of 1 billion years, what is each date telling us? How old is the rock, and how
are we defining “the rock?”
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40
3). Isotopic analysis of a granitic intrusion indicates that 25% of the original K is present. Analysis of a nearby
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basaltic intrusion indicates that 50% of the original amount of K is present.
4A). Pebbles of an igneous rock are incorporated within a conglomerate. The pebbles yield a
radiometric age of 300 million years. What can you say about age of the conglomerate based on this
data?
The Conglomerat is younger than the pebbles, at which the pebbles is 300
million year
So the age of the conglomerate is <300 years
4B). The same conglomerate is intruded by a dike that yields a radiometric age of 200 million years.
What can you now say about the possible age range of the conglomerate?
238
6). How many half-lives are required to yield a mineral with 625 atoms of U and 19,375 atoms of
206 238 206 9
Pb? (The half-life for U to Pb decay is 0.71 x 10 years)
625 /(625+19375) =625/(20000) = 0.03125 = 1/32 = 3.125% of parent remains and 5 half lives have
passed. The half-life for 238U to 206Pb decay is 0.71 x 109 years, so 5 x 0.71 x 109 years = 3.55 x 109
years.
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7). Calculate the age of a rock containing the following atoms of radioactive parent element A:
1,125,000 atoms. Stable daughter element B: 34,875,000 atoms. The half-life of element A is 6.25
million years. What is the absolute age of the rock containing these parent and daughter elements?
1,125,000 atom /(1,125,000 atoms + 34,875,000 atoms)
= 1,125,000 atoms/36,000,000 atoms = 0.03125= 1/32
3.125% of parent remains, and 5 half-lives have passed.
5 x 6.25 million years = 31 million years
8). A bone was recently recovered from a site in eastern Africa. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the
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bone contains 12.5% of the original amount of C. How old is the bone? (Half-life of C = 5,730
years)
In order to calculate the age of a radioactive material, two things must be known:
Knowing these two values one can determine the age of a material using the equation:
Example A:
If a rock today which contains 25% Uranium 235 and 75% Lead 207, determine the age of the rock.
The parent atom in this instance is Uranium 235. Since it is assumed that originally there was 100%
uranium and 0% lead, two half-lives must have passed by. During the first half-life the abundance of
parent atoms was reduced from 100% to 50%. During the second half-life the remaining 50% parent
was reduced to 25% Thus:
Age = 2 X 704 million = 1,408,000,000 years old (1.408 billion years old)
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9). Why is carbon-14 more appropriate then uranium-235 for dating archaeological sites?
-Most geological sites are relatively recent in terms of earth history. Therefore you need something
with a short half life which will decay quickly to determine the age of archaeological material. Also
archaeological material is frequently contains organic material which is made of carbon. Because
carbon has a short half-life and is present in organic material it is the appropriate parent element to
use for dating archaeological sites.
10). You find a rock which contains 75% uranium-235 (U-235) and 25% lead-207 (Pb-207). Refer to
the table above and answer the following questions.
A. Which of the two elements is the parent and which is the daughter?
B. In order for radiometric dating to be accurate, how much lead-207 must we assume was present
when the rock first formed?
C. How much uranium-235 must we assume was present when the rock was first formed?
The equation for the age of rock is: Age= the number of half-lives x half-life. The number of half-lives
is 0.5 since there is 75% parent present. According to the above table, the half-life of uranium-235 is
704 million years. Therefore the age of the rock is : 0.5 x 704 million years= 352 million years.
11). Refer to the list of half-lives above. What is the half-life of potassium-40?
12). Refer to the list of half-lives above. What is the daughter element produced by carbon-14?
Nitrogen-14
13). Why do we still find carbon-14 in the atmosphere though the half-life is short?
Carbon-14 is continuosly being produced in the upper atmosphere by the interaction of the cosmic ray
on the nitrogen molecules.
14). You determine that there is 12.5% strontium-87 in a substance. What is the parent element? How
much parent is there? How many half-lives does that represent?
The parent is rubidium-877.Assuming the assumptions for radiometric dating are valid, there should
be 87.5 % parent 87.5% corresponds to 0.25 half-lives.