tgamble

I thought it was just me. I honesty don't see a different meaning between the two.

Jobar

I had a good friend on the old Freethinkersforum who went by 'axe'. OOOoooooooo, he's gonna fling a fit when he hears about this!

He was one of the regulars at FTF who did not move here, along with me and several others. I rag him about coming here every so often- he'd fit right in.

axe

Ok I am not in Law enforcement I took Criminology as I was planning on going to the RCMP. I have a learning disability that affects the written ( or typed word.) I am not Dumb it just takes extra effort to put the thoughts from my head in written form I am much more capable in vocal interaction than in written form.

Rockmom I don't claim to understand those things as I stated earlier I am just trying too. Please use a simpler vocabulary and maybe I will catch on..

If you read what I posted earlier I am not trying to be obtuse. I have trouble with Grammatical structure wich I overcome when I say aloud to myself the words wich I wish to write or Type that is how I made it through my college and University courses . It took alot of convincing just for them to let me take the courses because of the difficulties I have. I made it through Seminary by the grace of being allowed oral reports.

I fimd my wording quite plain on the subject of correlation vs calibration. Correlation takes two divergent pieces of information and finds links , For example volcanic rocks dated to say 2 million BC and a Coelacanth found in the same strata level. Calibration to me means that they would set the machines by a predetermined date thought to be the age of Fossil remains in the strata. I wouldn't buy into that myself as obviously there would be chance for gross error. I want facts but if because I also have faith that makes me naive in your books so be it. I do apologize for not taking the time to clarify my posts more to your liking but I have a life outside Forums and people who rely on me so I try not to take the effort required to keep posts precise grammatically and structurally.


Again I do appreciate any help I can get for gaining understanding in these subjects, Maybe I can offer something insightfull in Religous or Cultural anthropology. ( Like I said they are interests of mine I hold no degrees and probably couldn't maintain good enough marks to get them.

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: axe ]

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: axe ]</p>

rockmom

Well, if you really do want to learn, I'll try to tone down my jargon. I am not certain there are 'lay' terms for some of this, but I'll try.

I'll describe the machine I have used to measure isotopes. Isotopes are elements with different numbers of neutrons (neutrally charged particles). Hydrogen has three isotopes normal hydrogen with 1 proton, deuterium with 1 proton and 1 neutron, and tritium with 1 proton and 2 neutrons. A mass spectrometer would be used to measure the amount of each of these in a sample. The mass spectrometer separates out the different masses in the sample. Because the weight of an element comes from the number of protons and neutrons we can know how much of each isotope is in a sample. We don't measure a date, we measure an amount of an isotope. You then use that number to calculate an age based on the half life of the the radioactive isotope. Igneous rocks usually used for this kind of dating.

Now the geologic time table (Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, etc) is based on fossils and was created before there was radiometric dating. They (in the early 19th century) used index fossils. See my previous post to see what make for a good index fossil. Generally, more than one index fossil is used to date a sedimentary formation. The date you get from using index fossils is relative (older than this other formation, younger than that one).

The absolute ages (65 millions years ago, etc) you see on geologic time tables were added as cross cutting igneous rocks were dated. Say you have a volcanic layer over a sedimentary layer. You have a relative date for the sedimentary layer and you can say that it is younger than the absolute date you get from the volcanic layer.

axe

Thanks Rockmom that is what I understood them to be.