Professor Dave Explains
Methods of Dating the Earth Part 2: Absolute Dating (Radiometric Dating)
We just learned about relative dating, but if you really want to calculate the age of a rock, absolute dating is what you need. This takes advantage of the presence of radioactive nuclides that decay at a reliable rate, so it is also...
Professor Dave Explains
Nuclear Reactions, Radioactivity, Fission and Fusion
Radioactivity. We've seen it in movies, it's responsible for the Ninja Turtles. It's responsible for Godzilla. But what is it? It's time to learn exactly what nuclear reactions are, and what it is that makes atomic bombs so destructive,...
Professor Dave Explains
Radiometric Dating: Carbon-14 and Uranium-238
When you read about the ages of certain ancient artifacts, or even the age of the earth itself, how do we know such numbers? How can we know that a fossil is precisely 250 million years old? The key technique here is radiometric dating....