What Can Radiometric Dating Tell Us About the Age of Rocks That the Law of Superposition Cannot?

Review Quiz

1. Plate tectonics formed the Atlantic Body of water over the course of 180 million years. How does this span of fourth dimension compare with the entire bridge of geologic fourth dimension on Earth?

   a. It is about 4/100ths of the bridge of geologic time on Earth.
   b. It is about thirty,000 times the span of geologic time on Earth.
   c. It is near ane millionth of the span of geologic time on World.
   d. It is impossible to compare to the entire span of geologic time on Earth because geologic time is space.
   

2. Which factor is a challenge to geologists in establishing the boundaries of the geologic time scale?

   a. Some radiometric dating techniques are becoming more than precise.
   b. Well-nigh rocks do not comprise minerals that can be dated using radiometric dating.
   c. The rates at which by geologic events have occurred has varied through Earth'southward history.
   d. The exponential decay of radioactive atoms means scientists are running out of time to obtain radiometric data.
   

3. Which practise geologists primarily employ to determine the absolute ages of boundaries on the geologic time scale?

   a. Correlation methods
   b. Cantankerous-cutting methods
   c. Law of superposition
   d. Radiometric dating
   

4. When using radiometric dating to determine the absolute age of a rock, which quantities does a geologist compare in a sample?

   a. The half-lives of various isotopes
   b. The numbers of radioactive isotopes
   c. The concentrations of different minerals
   d. The amounts of girl and parent isotopes
   

5. A geologist analyzes the amount of potassium-40 in a stone and determines that 25 percentage of the original potassium-forty is yet present. Bold no potassium-40 has been lost to any process other than radioactive decay, what is the approximate absolute age of the stone?

   

   a. 750 million years
   b. 312 meg years
   c. two.5 billion years
   d. 5 billion years
   

6. The half-life of a radioactive isotope in a fossil is divers as:

   a. Half of the accented age of a fossil
   b. The ratio of the daughter isotope to the parent isotope in the fossil
   c. The number of times the isotope undergoes radioactivity in the fossil
   d. The time it takes for half of the parent isotope to decay into a daughter isotope in the fossil
   

7. Carbon-12 and carbon-14 are both found in living organisms. What is the difference between carbon-14 and carbon-12?

   a. Carbon-fourteen has a greater diminutive number.
   b. Carbon-14 has two more protons in its nucleus.
   c. Carbon-14 has ii more neutrons in its nucleus.
   d. Carbon-fourteen has two more electrons surrounding its nucleus.
   

8. The boundaries between various periods on the geologic time scale are based primarily on:

   a. Fault planes
   b. Radiometric dating
   c. Nonconformities and disconformities
   d. Emergence or extinction of organisms preserved in the fossil record
   

9. What property of index fossils makes them so useful for subdividing geologic time?

   a. They are short-lived.
   b. They are radioactive.
   c. They are exceptionally old.
   d. They are nowadays in both young and old layers of stone.
   

10. What features of stone strata would exist nigh useful for a geologist to analyze in order to correlate stone layers in two different locations?

    a. Fossils
    b. Inclusions
    c. Athwart unconformities
    d. Cantankerous-cutting relationships
    

11. How does the principle of faunal succession allow geologists to correlate rock strata in unlike geographic locations?

    a. It states that layers of rock strata at unlike locations can be correlated according to the unique set of fossils they contain.
    b. Information technology states that fossils within rock strata are by and large homogeneous, suggesting that stone strata throughout a region should reveal like sets of fossils.
    c. It states that the fossils in rock strata are older than the rock layers, allowing geologists to link younger and older layers beyond a region.
    d. It states that the evolution of fossils in i region should correlate with the evolution of fossils through different stone strata in another region.
    

12. An igneous rock intrudes into three tilted layers of sedimentary rock. Which ready of relative dating methods is nigh useful to determine the chronological club of formation of the rocks?

    a. Constabulary of superposition, cross-cutting relationships, and law of original horizontality
    b. Law of original horizontality, rule of original lateral continuity, and rule of inclusions
    c. Rule of inclusions, police of superposition, and cross-cut relationships
    d. Law of original horizontality, rule of inclusions, and law of superposition
    

13. The photo shows a sedimentary layer overlying metamorphic rocks. How is the boundary between the 2 formations best described? (Photograph Source: Margaret W. Carruthers.)

    

    a. A mistake plane
    b. A bedding plane
    c. A disconformity
    d. A nonconformity
    

14. A geologist examines a layer of sedimentary stone strata that contains pebbles of granite. From this, the geologist could infer that:

    a. An older layer of granite is below the sedimentary rock
    b. An older layer of granite is above the sedimentary rock
    c. A younger layer of granite is below the sedimentary rock
    d. A younger layer of granite is to a higher place the sedimentary rock
    

15. Which would generally NOT exist involved in determining the relative age of stone strata?

    a. Unconformities
    b. Radioactivity
    c. Rule of superposition
    d. Cross-cutting relationships
    

16. Which shows the right order, from oldest to youngest, of the relative ages of the formations shown?

    

    a. A, B, C, D
    b. D, B, C, A
    c. A, C, B, D
    d. D, C, B, A
    

17. How does the principle of uniformitarianism differ from earlier views of the geologic processes that take shaped Earth?

    a. It claims that the structures on Earth are gradually becoming more than compatible in shape and composition.
    b. It proposes that just gradual, slowly occurring, natural processes can significantly bear on the structures on Globe.
    c. Information technology suggests that the processes currently shaping the Globe are the aforementioned processes that shaped Earth throughout its history.
    d. Information technology asserts that the processes shaping Earth have slowed to a more gradual stride compared with earlier catastrophic events that occurred more frequently in Globe's past.
    

18. "The present is the key to the past" all-time summarizes which principle in the history of geologic fourth dimension?

    a. Plutonism
    b. Gradualism
    c. Catastrophism
    d. Uniformitarianism
    

19. The principle of catastrophism is NOT supported by which observation?

    a. Sudden floods tin can carve wide, deep valleys in a very curt fourth dimension.
    b. A volcanic eruption tin class a mountain over the grade of a few days.
    c. A stone from space can crash into Earth'south surface, forming a behemothic hole.
    d. A continent tin can drift from ane side of the world to the other over millions of years.
    

20. The absolute age of a rock is the:

    a. Length of time over which the rock formed
    b. Period of geologic time in which the rock formed
    c. Amount of fourth dimension that has passed since the rock formed
    d. Historic period of the rock relative to older and younger rocks around it
    

21. A geologist determines the chronological order in which layers of rock were deposited in a canyon. How is this different from determining the absolute age of the rocks?

    a. The society of rock layers was not examined.
    b. The verbal age in years of each stone layer was not calculated.
    c. The fossils independent in successive rock layers were not compared.
    d. The rock layers could non be classified in terms of menstruum on the geologic time scale.
    

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