Creationist Arguments with Dating Methods.

At the top of the page it seems that way, when they mention U-Th-Pb and Rb-Sr and K-Ar dating as chief dating methods in use today. Rb-Sr is an isochron method, and U-Th-Pb is almost always a concordia-discordia method which compensates for and detects some possible problems in a different manner.Of course, they're way behind the times; Rb-Sr is makes up about 5% of the dating studies done today, whereas Argon-Argon (another isochron method) makes up about 25-30% of the dating studies done today (and has been important for years). U-Pb-Th makes up about 40-45% of the dating studies done today. K-Ar makes up around 10% of the dating studies done today, but is essentially never used without confirmatuon by another method becasue of its possible problems.Unfortunately, about half the discussion that follows is just plain garbage, and the other half applies only to K-Ar dating. The discussion is just plain irrelevant to 90% or so of the dating methods in use today! It does not apply to Rb-Sr, Ar-Ar, Sm-Nd, or U-Th-Pb dating! Incorect. Argon-Argon dating is an isochron method and makes up approximately 25-30% of the studies performed today. Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd are both isochron methods and each makes up about 5% of the studies that are performed today, so isochron methods make up about 35-40% of the studies that are performed today, and the percentage was higher in the 1980's and 1990's.However, U-Th-Pb concordia-discordia is where it's at, and where it's been at for many years, and that's a kettle of fish that's not even addressed by the site that you posted.

I recommend that you read the Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective link that schrafinator posted; it's very good, and you should walk before you run. Not really. It's somewhat above the gee-whiz popular science level and somewhat below the college-level course that really goes into the details. To really understand it and be able to do it, you're talking about 3-5 terms of college courses, several of them pretty advanced, maybe even graduate courses. You need to know field geology, mineral chemistry, a little something about sample preparation (which is usually done by the laboratory technicians), instrumentation capabilities and limitations, and some very advanced data analysis techniques and statistics.Here's some fairly detailed links: Sample Preparation
U-Pb isotopic dating
Radiogenic Isotope Geology, a draft (no figures) of the next edition of one of the classic and standard textbooks and reference works. Chapter 2 covers some analytical techniques.
Berkeley Geochronolgy Center, home of Dr. Kenneth Ludwig, author of Isoplot, the Cadillac of geochronology analysis packages (an add-in for Microsoft Excel).{added first paragraph in edit}[This message has been edited by JonF, 12-01-2003]

Dating Methods in Science has very brief descriptions of a multitude of techniques and links to more explanations.Tim Thompson maintains A Radiometric Dating Resource List, more brief discussions and links; the first part is responses to creationist claims and the second part covers various dating subjects.