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This world is far older than you can gage. Try, if you to
count to four billion, then add an other six hundred
million. Earth is older than you can see any river,
mountain, valley, or tree.
Mother Earth is four thousand, six hundred million years old (4,600
million = 4.6 billion), give or take a few hundred million years.
It is older than anything you can see around you.
The age of Earth is so long compared to all periods of time that we humans
are familiar with, it has been given a special name: Geologic time.
The age of Earth is as vast in time as the universe is vast in space. It is not
easy to really get a "feel" for 4,600 million years! One way to try to get a "feel"
for how big it is, is to break the number down into smaller pieces that perhaps
we can understand. Just for fun you might try the activity, "What is a Million?"
Then try to think about 4,600 million!
Houideg Athmane Geologist Engineer
Here we use another comparison to help show the span of time since the formation
of Earth:
The odd names
of the different
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time periods on
Tim the Staircase of
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Time were made
ay
up by geologists,
rw
people really
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• But these two methods only give the relative age of rocks which are younger
and which are older. How do we find out how old a rock is in years? Or how
do we know how long ago a particular group of fossilized creatures lived?
• The age of a rock in years is called its absolute age. Geologists find
absolute ages by measuring the amount of certain radioactive elements in
the rock. When rocks are formed, small amounts of radioactive elements
usually get included. As time passes, the "parent" radioactiv
• e elements change at a regular rate into non-radioactive "daughter"
elements. Thus, the older a rock is, the larger the number of daughter
elements and the smaller the number of parent elements are found in the
rock.
Organic Materials
Coal - Lignite - Bituminous Minerals
COLOUR Visible light spectrum Look at the sample and determine its colour
radiation reflected - white, black, green, clear, etc.
from mineral
Use minerals of known hardness from the
Mohs Hardness Kits. Scratch the unknown
HARDNESS mineral with a known hardness to
Resistance to
determine which mineral is harder.
scratching or abrasion
Continue doing this with harder or softer
minerals from the kit until the hardness is
determined.