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Author | Topic: Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Hi ThinAirDesign and welcome to the fray,
I'm mid '50s in age, was raised in the south in extreme bible belt conditions (Seventh Day Adventist Branch Davidian cult stuff). Private bible/home school my only education, and with an almost cartoonish rule set (no secular music, no dating, no TV/radio/newspapers, etc.). Other than the bible, education was literally evil. I got absolutely zero science, no math beyond simply addition/subtraction/multiplication/division, no history (other than the bible version), on and on. I was a curious kid and LOVED anything related to how things work and was SO frustrated when not allowed to explore. Let me apologize for America letting you down. Glad you were able to work your way out.
I'm mid '50s in age, was raised in the south in extreme bible belt conditions (Seventh Day Adventist Branch Davidian cult stuff). Private bible/home school my only education, and with an almost cartoonish rule set (no secular music, no dating, no TV/radio/newspapers, etc.). Other than the bible, education was literally evil. I got absolutely zero science, no math beyond simply addition/subtraction/multiplication/division, no history (other than the bible version), on and on. I was a curious kid and LOVED anything related to how things work and was SO frustrated when not allowed to explore. 3: Since no science or scientist is perfect (and this is the wedge they have been hammered with all their lives), I need to develop ways to help them understand the consilience of evidence. All they've heard is they use carbon dating to prove the age of a tree and the age of a tree to prove carbon dating. or they date the fossil by the layer and then the layer by the fossil. I need to be able to show them how sciences like dendrochronology and radio carbon dating are complimentary, not circular. If you would like I can take material from my thread Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 (which Tempe 12ft Chicken referred to) and tailor it to small increments along with some suggested experiments. Do you have any trees you can cut down where you know or have some idea when they were planted (or when they could not have been planted, such as a former field to set a known age limit)?
Every heard of the Khan Academy? (Google it if not) It started merely as an effort by Salman Khan to encourage and tutor his young cousin remotely and he has ended up making a difference in the educational lives of many. Ultimately, I would like to aim at something like that (one step at a time) for fundamentalists who are becoming interested in spreading their science wings. Cool idea. I'm interested.by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Another topic you might want to investigate is BioGeography
See Alfred Russel Wallace and Biogeography for starters Another resource is The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of ExtinctionPaperback — April 14, 1997 by David Quammen (Author) quote: This would serve as a good introduction to Alfred Russel Wallace -- the "other Darwin" who came to the same conclusions independently from the evidence he found. A lot of creationists think only Darwin is the problem\cause\instigator, but in reality science is built on the shoulders of those that came before, and thus when you reach a certain point of knowledge in a field discoveries will be made that change how we look at the world -- and those discoveries will be made (and often by several people at about the same time), whether a certain person exists or not. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I've got truck, chain saw and know how to drive to the forest. As far as a known age, I'll have to think of a way to work on that one (but I will). Do you have any areas that were logged? Perhaps the landowner will allow you to cut trees in return for cutting and stacking it for firewood or some other task. I am going to assume you have some areas that were logged and can find some historical data on when it happened. I would also assume that the field was replanted with one species ... You can probably find dates for when those areas were cleared. It would be cool to then approach the question from trying to date when the area was logged, what evidence you have and how reliable is it. Cut a small tree (6"-8" diameter) and discuss why there are rings (better if deciduous trees are used as it should be pretty obvious that it is difficult for the tree to grow when it has no leaves). So you can approximate the age of the tree when cut from the rings, you know when it was cut: can you approximate when it sprouted? Then take a cloth tape (sewing tape) and measure circumferences of the tree at different heights and see if they can predict what they will find when you cut 10 ft up and 20 ft up, are the rings thinner or are there less of them? What if they are fewer -- why would that happen? Can you tell you how old the tree was when the tree reached those different heights? If there are less of them which ones are missing, the innermost or the outermost? How can you tell? Where does a new ring form? Draw a line through the center and discuss taking cores along the line to count and measure the rings. Lay a piece of paper along the line and mark off the outer edges of the dark part of the ring. Discuss why these are more distinct than other edges. Start at the center and measure the thickness, if the next one is thicker mark a + over the edge tik, if narrower mark a - over the tik, if the same mark it 0. Compare the next one to this ring (not the center one). Continue for whole radius. Do the same for the 10 and 20 ft heights. You should have a pattern something like
++-o+oo-+++ Can you match the patterns for the different heights? Take a five tik pattern and a 10 tik pattern of the bottom section and match that against the upper rings. Are there multiple places you can match the patterns? Is the number of multiple matchups affected by how many tik marks are compared? Can you use the patterns to verify that the outer ring is the same at each height? Discuss what causes these patterns to form -- would the same patterns be in other trees in the field? Discuss why you can't use the actual ring thickness for comparisons. How would you improve the data to reflect smaller variation in widths? Draw a line that misses the center and discuss how that affects the data, what you know and don't know from a core along that line. Discuss the concepts of minimum age vs actual age. Measure the circumference of various trees and see if you can decide which trees should be older. Do you have Boy Scouts? I worked with some SDA troops in Michigan. They have techniques for estimating the heights of trees. What would finding the tallest tree tell you about the relative age of the tree? Does height correlate with circumference? It would be cool to estimate the height of a tree by two different methods, cut it down and check the estimate, and then discuss the relative accuracy of the estimates. What would finding the oldest tree in the field tell you about when the field was cleared? I would expect trees from a logged area to be ~100 years old, maybe 200 if you are lucky, so you won't be challenging the 6,000 year age with this work, and you can be up front with that, especially if you can get historical data of when the field was last cleared Enjoy A good resource is: http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Department of Geography, The University of Tennessee Dr. Grissino-Mayer is very approachable and has exchanged emails with me. btw -- should have done this last time
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
One obvious one is gathering handfull of dirt, some sand and gravel, stick them in a something like a spaghetti jar, top up with water, shake the whole thing up and leave it overnight to settle. YES! I've been thinking of that one. I mean, how hard is it to follow that lesson? I get that some things in science are hard, but after a few Mason jar lessons, how difficult is it to see that all layers don't come from one event? Then throw in some clay, diatomaceous earth and fine silt. Take pictures every hour or so with consistent lighting and a white background and see if you can discern different degrees of turbidity. (look up tubidity meter) How long does it take for the clay to settle into a noticeable layer? What happens when you add salt? What would happen to the clay layer formation if sand and gravel kept being added? Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
See messaging for personal information
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi christianguy15 and welcome to the fray.
before i comment do you believe in God This forum may be somewhat different from others you are used to. There are many (sub) forums that divide up general categories of interest, and there is a general 3-way divide into faith based categories, science based categories, and general social categories. Each forum has many topics that are up for open discussion, but one general rule of thumb is to stick to the original topic as much as possible. So don't feel upset if asked to take your comments to another thread, it's just housekeeping to keep each thread neat and topically consistent. You can either search for a topic where this comment would be part of the discussion or start one yourself.
before i comment do you believe in God In the science forums this is regarded as non-relevant -- science is agnostic, and it welcomes people of all faiths in doing the process of science to discover the wonders of the world and universe, as is evidenced by the large numbers of people of faith doing science. So feel free, as ThinAirDesigns says, to suggest scientific experiments that would be educational. btw -- many new people get "ganged-up" on and feel they need to reply to every post. Feel free to pick and chose your battles and not feel overwhelmed. Enjoy
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quote: also check out (help) links on any formatting questions when in the reply window. For other formatting tips see Posting TipsFor a quick overview see EvC Forum Primer If you have problems with replies see Report Discussion Problems Here 3.0 by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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The paper is called "Are the Bristlecone pines really so old?" A couple of quick notes -- first, according to what is available (such as you've posted below) it appears that Lammert grew the seedlings in a greenhouse with no seasonal variations. Most pines will grow continuously in such environment building up layers of "summer" cells. Second, false growth rings can be identified by how the growth rings terminate. See Dendrochronology Fact and Creationist Fraud for discussion of another creationist attempt to discredit the Bristlecone pines. Third, it is one thing to induce a false ring in the lab, it is an entirely different thing to show that the conditions for false ring formation could have occurred in such a way as to perfectly mimic an annual ring in general width and detail - how would the climate suddenly go to a double growth season of generally equivalent length? How about 3 growth seasons?
"Are the Bristlecone pines really so old?" This is actually an excellent question to ask our budding scientists, once the basics of dendrochronology are covered (including how to identify both missing rings and extra rings, and how to pick a good species for making extended chronologies). This would be like DrA's "How do we know" sections of his excellent geology book. One way would be to do independent tests of the Bristlecone chronology. btw -- I am in the process of rewriting my age correlations thread to include new information and to use a slightly different approach, more like what you are asking for, so this may be the impetus I need to get this done Here is an excerpt from the new version:
quote: There are more tests we can make that show that we can have high confidence in the accuracy and precision of the chronology independent of false or missing rings. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : correct linkby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Interesting. Hadn't heard that before -- who was asking for the raw data (access to pieces of wood)? I know that some was exchanged with the German Oak chronology people and some with the IntCal people. See also IntCal04
University of Arizona Libraries
quote: Indeed, data taken from different radial lines from the center will have different widths, and so you should have a set process, perhaps taking the longest radius and the shortest radius and averaging them. Cores are usually duplicated for cross-checking as well. But I would think that you would need to review the whole data set not any specific subsets, preferably all by one person to reduce process inconsistencies. He may also have some rare and therefore important links that he doesn't want to lose control over. Now I will also say that I don't think it would involve any fudging of data, because of the work with the German Oaks and the consilience of data between those two sets. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
According to the linked article it was a part-time climate analyst named Doug Keenan who prevailed. What has he done with the evidence? Was he looking to check Baillie's chronology or was he looking for climate data (dendroclimatology is another facet of tree ring data as it shows patterns of warm wet dry and cold weather)? Were the test he wanted to do destructive of the evidence? Baillie's work was not by one person but a lab with technicians with strict protocols to protect the evidence. Letting specimens dry out can change their ring widths. I remain unconvinced that there was any deception or intent to hide information. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... Certainly it appears that the University of Arizona (which I believe is the granddaddy of this science) has a very health attitude towards the value of open and shared data. ... They also are the home of the Radiocarbon Journal and make all back issues open to public access http://www.radiocarbon.org/ We will get into 14C later when we start looking into other evidence that confirms the tree rings are old, but in a simple way that doesn't involve accepting radioactive decay rates being constant. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... For calibrated dates, the only "assumptions" are that trees grow one ring per year (which can be validated), and that we can count tree rings. If there were any change in the decay rate or in the initial concentration of radiocarbon, it would affect the tree rings and the unknown sample equally, and would completely cancel out. ... Indeed. What you can compare are the actual ratio of 14C/12C in the tree rings to the actual ratio of 14C/12C in the samples -- these measurements are actually the raw data that 14C ages are calculated from, but without the calculations they are still objective empirical data. If the rate of decay has varied in the past then - as you say - the ratio of 14C/12C in the sample and the appropriate tree ring will decay by the same amounts regardless of what that variation or rate actually is.
... (I'm putting together a talk on radiocarbon for a Christian group next month, where I will stress this.) Here is some additional info you can use that I have gathered for my rewrite:
... (I'm putting together a talk on radiocarbon for a Christian group next month, where I will stress this.) Would you mind providing me with refs and transcript and a way to reference that in my rewrite? Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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I have been giving some thought to this, so I thought I would lay out a rough outline here, see what you think, and get some input from others (like Coyote and kbertsche).
And I was thinking about a section on Creationist estimates of the age of the earth
Would you put that at the start (after definitions)? Just for starters. (nap now) Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
When it comes to #4, I only started studying radiocarbon dating a few weeks ago but it didn't take me long to figure out that many statements made about it were hogwash. I do have one question from your response. An excellent resource on all forms of radiometric dating systems is:
Radiometric DatingA Christian Perspective Dr. Roger C. Wiens See page 12 in particular A good easy to understand explanation of the formation of 14C to how it is used for dating can be found here How Carbon-14 Dating Works | HowStuffWorks I include information from this site in my age dating thread Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Extremely near me (all around me in fact) are rather vast tornado torn areas with much downfall. This occurred on 4/27/11. I can easily get whatever wood (live and dead) I want from these areas. Would this be a good starting point for the experiments you are suggesting? How good are you at identifying tree species? I ask because if you want to compare trees it is better with the same species. But yes, a good place to start. The kids may be interested in making stools with sections, and that is a good excuse to polish the surfaces for easy counting and for souvenirs to remember the exercise. What are the parameters you know?
What things can you test for?
What things can you NOT test for?
If you could cut down some still living trees nearby you could compare the tik strip patterns and see if they properly record the time since the tornado (4 years should be 4 rings, but the outer ring could be problematic if partially formed -- they are usually discarded because the thickness is not dependable data). Assuming they show annual data over the 4 years
Are there other older such events? Are any of the trees of known age? (street or house trees planted at a known time) Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1426 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Edited by RAZD, : No reason given.
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