Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

It's the first time I've seen this graph, so it looks like a spike in 14C production at ~775ADWhat it does look like is strong confirmation in the accuracy and precision of the different tree ring chronologies back to 750AD.

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... They also cited Chinese historical records from A.D. 773 that described a major atmospheric disturbance at the time, including a significant dust event (e.g., Napier, 2001). ...
... The fact that the 14C signal is observed in five very different locations with exactly the same amplitude is remarkable in itself. ...

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Interesting. "Core" is not necessary, dendrochronologies use both cores and cross-cuts to collect data, with cores normally done on living tree samples, cross-cuts on dead samples.Enjoy

After tree rings the next layered system I discuss is varve layers, in particular the varves of Lake Suigetsu in Japan. The layers alternate diatoms (spring\summer) and clay (winter) and bedded in the varves are organic fossils -- leaves, twigs, bugs -- that died, sank to the bottom and were buried by subsequent layers. These fossils give us measurements of 14C levels from the time of the deposit, and the layers are annual so we can place these fossils of life in time.These layers take the age counting and 14C content record back to almost 36,000 years ago. See Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 and Message 5.The Lascaux Cave Paintings were dated to be 17,300 years old by 14C on organic samples left in the cave and charcoal used in some drawings.

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Lascaux (Lascaux Caves) (English /lsˈkoʊ/,[1] French: [lasko][2]) is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be 17,300 years old.[3][4] They primarily consist of images of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. In 1979, Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in the Vzre valley.[5]

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http://www.mazzaroth.com/ChapterOne/LascauxCave.htm

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... The Lascaux cave contains some 600 paintings and 1500 engravings dating from the Paleolithic Period. The very few symbols are limited to isolated or grouped dots (mostly black) and to variously coloured dashes. The animals depicted on the cave wall are horses, bulls, and deer. The "Hall of Bulls" mural is dated circa 15,000 B.C. The radiocarbon dating of charcoal recovered from the cave floor indicates occupancy circa 15,000 B.C. to 14,000 B.C. ...

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Cave painting - Wikipedia

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Nearly 340 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. Initially, the age of the paintings had been a contentious issue, since methods like radiocarbon dating can produce misleading results if contaminated by samples of older or newer material,[3] and caves and rocky overhangs (where parietal art is found) are typically littered with debris from many time periods. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself and the torch marks on the walls.[4] The choice of subject matter can also indicate chronology. For instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age.

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The oldest date given to an animal cave painting is now "a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old" at Maros in Sulawesi, an Indonesian island. Indonesian and Australian scientists have dated other non-figurative paintings on the walls to be approximately 40,000 years old. The method they used to confirm this was dating the age of the stalactites that formed over top of the paintings.[5] ...

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Note that the caves were formed by water, but water after they have been painted (from human tourist exhalation and from cave drips making stalactites) is damaging the paintings. ie there could be no flood after they were painted.Enjoy

Don't you also get ash on land and clay in water from the cloud particulate material?Are not Tuffs formed from ash material compacted and solidified (the footprints in laetoli)?
Volcanic ash - WikipediaThanks

It may have something to do with being the only radiometric system that dates things young enough to be in history and recent prehistory, such as biblical artifacts.Dating biblical artifacts gives warm fuzzy feelings ... and then it is ruined by dating other things to be too old, dad burn it!This creates cognitive dissonance, and anger is part of the reaction. This is one of the reasons that I start out with just the measured amounts of 14C rather than an age calculation, and as the correlation between 14C levels and age from annual layering systems builds up (tree rings and lake varves) you don't actually need to calculate an age at all -- you can just correlate the 14C level to the calibration curve to derive the age. This avoids the whole decay rate variation issue.Enjoy

So ash falling on Lake Suigetsu leaves a tuff layer that can date the volcanic eruptions, and ash falling on Greenland ice can date the volcanic eruptions.There are also correlations with major volcanic ash clouds causing climate change - the year without a summer (1816) - that also show up as frost rings in trees. The larger the ash cloud the more widespread the effect.Enjoy

There are two aspects to this:One is that the level of 14C/12C can be measured very precisely (<0.25% error), so it is objective empirical evidence, and different labs obtain the same measurements that confirm it.The other is that 14C does decay, resulting in less available to measure as artifacts get older, but that we do not need to know what the decay rate is nor whether it is steady, variable, increasing or decreasing.btw Christian Geologists on Noah's Flood: Biblical and Scientific Shortcomings of Flood Geology, part 4 also has this graph:

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Now I don't quite know how he gets the "measured 14C" values ...We can convert graphs that report "14C age" to ln(14C ratios) by reversing the formula used to calculate the age:⁽¹⁾Radiocarbon Date calculation

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t = -8033 ln(Asn/Aon)

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so ln(Asn/Aon) = -t/8033Enjoy_______________
⁽¹⁾ - As this is derived from Asn = Aon(1/2)^{^(t/5568)} -- using the Libby half-life of 5568 yearsand ln(Asn/Aso) = ln(1/2)*(t/5568)so t = (5568/-0.693147)*ln(Asn/Aso) = -8032.9*ln(Asn/Aso)

Indeed. And the ash cloud affected climate globally with frost rings in the Bristlecone pines as well as the european oaks. Frost Rings in Trees as Records of Major Volcanic Eruptions (abstract).I have a copy of the article in pdf if interested.M.G.L.Baillie also discussed comparing ice core layers with volcanic dust correlated to tree frost rings (I have a copy of that too, somewhere ...)Enjoy

Another one to look out for is Don Batten -- see Dendrochronology Fact and Creationist FraudHave you heard about the Quote Mining Project?
Quote Mine Project: ContentsYou can buy ($8) a copy of
CRSQ 1982 Volume 19, Number 2.pdfhttp://crsbooks.org/...ck-issues/crsq-back-issue-single.htmlGetting a copy from Coyote would be cheaper

To be even more nit-picky, Faith, the thread is about science you can demonstrate, experiments you can do, facts ... and not what can be imagined, fantasized, envisaged, or hypothesized.Do you have ONE experiment you can suggest?What about your sandbox experiments?Enjoy

Indeed. You can have stochastic events (storms, bursting dams) and you can have seasonal events (spring runoff). Rhythmites are periodic sedimentation systems, while varves are generally annual events.One of the problems for creationists are factual evidence of many layers of alternating materials, not just by particle size but also by content.Particle size is one thing that affects rhythmite and varve formation, and varves can have different layers with different size particles, some that settle faster than others. The problem is that the conditions for fine layers are different from the conditions for coarse layers, so if there are many alternating layers that then there must be alternating conditions. Settling Velocity and Suspension Velocity⁽¹⁾

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Every material has its own suspension and settling velocity. The suspension velocity is the speed of water above which the water will pick up the material and hold it in suspension. The settling velocity is the speed below which the material will be dropped out of suspension and will settle out of the water.

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The relative sizes of gravel, sand, silt, and clay particles are shown below:

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Sand and gravel are both large and dense. In addition, they have a small surface area per unit volume since they are roughly spherical. So these types of particles have a high suspension velocity.

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13.6 Colloids⁽²⁾

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When finely divided clay particles are dispersed throughout water, they do not remain suspended but eventually settle out of the water because of the gravitational pull. The dispersed clay particles are much larger than molecules and consist of many thousands or even millions of atoms.

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Particle Size Analysis Lab⁽³⁾

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The connection between particle size and settling rate is expressed by Stoke's Law. This relationship shows that small particles, those exposing high specific surface area (m2 g-1), produce more resistance to settling through the surrounding solution than large particles and, hence, settle at slower velocities

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Stoke's Law: V = (D^{^2}g(d₁-d₂)/(18n)

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The formula shows that the settling velocity, V, is directly proportional to the square of the particle's effective diameter, D; the acceleration of gravity, g; and the difference between the density of the particle, d1, and density of the liquid, d2; but inversely proportional to the viscosity (resistance to flow) of the liquid, n. The density of water and its viscosity both change in a manner so that particles settle faster with increased temperature. Hence, it may be necessary to apply temperature correction factors as explained with the procedure.

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Stoke's Law can be condensed to V=kD^{^2} by assuming constant values for all components except the effective diameter of soil particles. Then, for conditions at 30 degrees C, k=11241. For particles size values in centimeters, the formula yields settling velocity, V, in centimeters per second. Because soil particles do not meet the requirements of being smooth spheres, exact conformance to Stoke's Law is not realized.

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Basically, if the water is moving faster than the settling rate then the particles don't settle. Soil Colloids⁽⁴⁾

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The colloidal state refers to a two-phase system in which one material in a very finely divided state is dispersed through second phase.

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The examples are:

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Solid in liquid - Clay in water (dispersion of clay in water)
Liquid in gas -Fog or clouds in atmosphere

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The clay fraction of the soil contains particles less than 0.002 mm in size. Particles less than 0.001 mm size possess colloidal properties and are known as soil colloids.

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If we use 0.002 mm (0.0002 cm) for clay in the above formula we getV = 11241(0.0002)^{^2} = 0.00044964 cm/s
= 1.62 cm/hr = 38.8 cm/day
= 15.3 in/day.As you can see the theoretical settling velocity of clay according to Stoke's Law would be very, very slowly. In a 100 ft deep lake a new clay particle deposited at the surface would theoretically take ~80 days to reach the bottom. Actual times are longer due to the interaction of charged clay particles with water, and because the clay particles are not spherical, but it would take days if not weeks or months for new clay from rainstorms to settle to the bottom. This is especially true in the center of the lake as the new inflow must take time to mix with the lake water and get dispersed sufficiently to reach the center area. This means that a lake can act as a buffer to average out all the clay sediment being introduced to the lake by the inflow: even large variations in inflow will have little effect on the amount of clay settling to the bottom at the center of the lake.This means that clay layers in varves are strong indicators of extended periods of undisturbed settling in the water column, and that is only half of the varve formation process -- the other half is the deposit of shells ("tests") from diatoms (algae) and foraminifera (amoeboid protists).That means bloom and die of these organisms in-between the calm settling periods for the fine sediments.There are over 30,000 such varves in Lake Suigetsu, Japan of clay alternating with diatom tests ...Enjoy.

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References

1. Cooke, R., Settling Velocity and Suspension Velocity, Mountain Empire Community College. 2013 [2013, December 2] http://water.me.vccs.edu/concepts/velocitysusp.htm
2. Prenhall.com, 13.6 Colloids, Chemistry, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education 2002 [2013, December 2] http://wps.prenhall.com/...objects/3312/3391718/blb1306.html
3. Farrel, P., Particle Size Analysis Lab, Soil, Water, and Climate Dept, University of Minnesota, 2010-2013 [2013, December 2] UMD: 404 Page Not Found
4. AgriInfo.in, Soil Colloids, Introduction to Soil Science, AgriInfo.in 2011 [2013, December 2] Soil Colloids - agriinfo.in

Edited by RAZD, : clrty

ThinAirDesigns meet Faith, as you may surmise from this brief experience Faith will go on for hundreds of posts defending her imagination. This has hijacked several threads in the past, and continuing to reply as you have will only encourage this to continue.Faith is adamant that her interpretation of the bible is absolutely true, and I'm sure you are familiar with this type of arguments.For instance if there are ~260 meters of thin varves, then the flood is responsible for depositing each one, regardless of how much time is needed for each layer to deposit out of suspension in a water column, with organic matter in one layer and absent in the alternate layer.Green River Formation - Wikipedia

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The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine layers, a dark layer during the growing season and a light-hue inorganic layer in the dry season. Each pair of layers is called a varve and represents one year. The sediments of the Green River Formation present a continuous record of six million years. The mean thickness of a varve here is 0.18 mm, with a minimum thickness of 0.014 mm and maximum of 9.8 mm.[1]

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The sedimentary layers were formed in a large area named for the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The three separate basins lie around the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah:

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quick calcs 260/(0.18/1000) = 1.4 million layers ... at 1 layer per hour that would take over 160 years ... 1 layer per minute would take 2.75 years ...... and in the middle of this rapid deposition we have this (wiki again) ...

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Stromatolite fossil from the Eocene Lake Gosuite, Laney Member, Green River Formation of south-western Wyoming

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Note the growth rings for this artifact that somehow grew in the middle of this murky deposition ...There are also evaporite layers covering thousands of sq ft ...Also see Glenn Morton ASA - January 1998: Re: Green River varvesI thought you might like this Lesson Plan:Indiana University Bloomington

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Students count the number of varves (annual layers of sediment) in shale billets, taken from the Green River Formation in Wyoming, formed during the Eocene. The count is then extended to reflect the entire 260 meters of sediments where the billets originated, a period of nearly 2 million years during which the annual lake sediments (varves) were laid down (DON'T TELL THIS TO STUDENTS. LET THEM DISCOVER IT). This provides a vivid tangible experience to see real data first hand showing the passage of at least nearly 2 million years for the existence of a large lake, in contrast to a traditional view that the entire Earth is only about 6-10 thousand years!

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Enjoy

Rarely, imho, does she do anything but speculate.Yes, Faith's first post was Message 240If something happened then the flood did it. It doesn't matter if cramming millions of years into a mechanism running less than one year involves processes that are physically impossible, the bible is true so therefore the supernatural flood did the impossible.... and since that post she has generated 37 speculation posts out of the next 88 posts, not one of them providing a single Earth Science Curriculum teaching lesson. Those 37 speculation posts then generated 47 replies, leaving 4 posts that pertained to the topic.That is what she does to any topic she joins.In Message 275 she says And then proceeds to get deeper into speculation on it.Then in Message 314 she bemoans how And so she continues to make 6 more posts ...Indeed, not answering anyone that is off-topic is one of the better ways to help a thread stay on topic.Enjoy

This was a rather common criticism at the time of that paper, and it is due to several factors:1.) the amount of 14C in the atmosphere is not constant as was initially assumed, and
B.) the actual half-life of 14C is 5,730 40 years years, not 5568 years as measured by Libby.
ζ.) the proportion of 14C in the atmosphere had been declining since the start of the industrial revolution due to the release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere, with no 14C faction.More 12C than in the past means the constant level 14C assumed was too low compared to pre-industrial artifacts atmosphere.A couple of half-lives out and you are getting dates that are noticeably too young.Enjoy

Luis Walter Alvarez - Wikipedia

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... In the years following the publication of their article, the clay was also found to contain soot, glassy spherules, shocked quartz crystals, microscopic diamonds, and rare minerals formed only under conditions of great temperature and pressure.[1]

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The clay would have formed from the ash like particles around the iridium particles from the impact ash cloud dust (the cause of the "atomic winter" scenario), which would be similar to a volcanic ash cloud in that respect ... the clay and soot particles should have separated from the iridium, glass and quartz crystals in water, settling at different rates due to density. On land it would be mixed and appear like a volcanic tuff.It also appears that the layer varies in thickness from location to locationEnjoy

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