Marc Vincent P.

Noro Grade 11 - Courage

Relative Dating Method Short Descriptions

Original Horizontality According to the principle, sediments that
are precipitated or deposited on the
Earth's surface build up in horizontal
layers. If rocks have been tilted, folded, or
metamorphosed, these events must have
occurred after deposition and lithification.
The principle of original horizontality is
critical in the understanding of folded and
tilted strata.
According to this principle, rock layers are
Superposition stacked or deposited one on top of the
other. The bottom will have the oldest rock
strata and the top will have the youngest.
This principle is used to calculate the ages
of rock strata or layers.

Cross – cutting According to the principle, if a fault or

other body of rock cuts through another
relationship body of rock, the fault or other body of
rock must be younger in age than the rock
through which it cuts and displaces. The
principle is used to calculate the relative
ages of rock layers and other geological
structures.
The principle states that if a rock body
Inclusion contains fragments of another rock body, it
must be younger than the rock fragments
it contains.
 Absolute Dating Short Descriptions
Method
Potassium – argon Potassium-argon dating is a method of
determining the time of origin of rocks by
measuring the ratio of radioactive argon to
radioactive potassium in the rock. This
dating method is based upon the decay of
radioactive potassium-40 to radioactive
argon-40 in minerals and rocks; potassium-
40 also decays to calcium-40. Potassium-
argon dating is accurate from 4.3 billion
years (the age of the Earth) to about
100,000 years before the present.
Uranium – lead dating is one of the earliest
Uranium – lead and most refined radiometric dating
techniques. With typical accuracy in the
0.1-1 percent range, it can be used to date
rocks that originated and crystallized
between about 1 million years ago and more
than 4.5 billion years ago.
The rubidium-strontium dating method uses
Rubidium – strontium radiometric dating to determine the age of
rocks and minerals based on the presence
of particular isotopes of rubidium and
strontium in those materials. The method
can be used on very old rocks since the
change happens very slowly—the half-life,
or the amount of time needed for half the
initial amount of rubidium-87 to vanish, is
roughly 50 billion years.
Carbon-14 dating is a method for measuring
Carbon – 14 the age of an object containing organic
material by utilizing the properties of
radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of
carbon. Using carbon-14 dating, it is
possible to estimate the age of some
archeological artifacts with biological
origins up to 50,000 years old.