Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists

Faith, do you feel you are persecuted for your beliefs? Do you find the disagreement and ridicule your beliefs garner here to be persecution given your voluntary participation?

The likely results of your plan don't seem to be good outcomes for you or your wife. Would being shunned by folks at church matter to either you or your spouse? If you don't actually smell what the Rock is cooking, why are you at an SDA church?I'm not trying to dissuade you, but surely you don't expect anyone to see the light? Or that you will encounter a pastor who is prepared to answer questions about nuclear physics? What would you consider a successful March 21 outcome?

I hope you have a good outcome. That said, holding dissident views is one thing, and a non-member 'busting' up church by contradicting the pastor is a different thing entirely. SDA is about as YEC as you can get. You might just as well question whether Jesus was resurrected at Bible study. This 'disciplining' activity... What was the intended effect supposed to be?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Not typical. It sounds like you had a real 'Creation Scientist' doing the presentation. There simply aren't that many of those guys around. Sure it does. When there is nobody there to point out the counter examples. That's right. Kangaroos hopped all the way from the middle east to Australia without any food. How long did that take? And how did they get to the ark in the first place?

How does this work?

One place to search for this stuff is in the archives here. We discussed this particular topic ad nauseum with a creationist sometime in the last six months. You might expect a small percentage (on order of 1 %) of N atoms to be included in the lattice of a diamond, and a local source of neutrons might well convert that Nitrogen to C-14. Thermal neutrons (meaning neutrons slowed to energies near caused by room temperature) are most easily absorbed by Nitrogen.Try the words nitrogen and diamonds in the local search facility.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Interesting. Most of the literature I've seen indicates that Nitrogen and Boron can be incorporated into a diamond lattice, but rarely show up as interstitial impurities.Not in large amounts, but certainly amounts that might interfere with C-14 dating are possible.But generally the amounts to be expected are low and diamonds with any C-14 in them from N impurities might well be the exception rather than the rule.

bad argument. sorry.ABE:What if the coal were near a vein/deposit of uranium? Your calculations are using just the numbers for the uranium that might be contained in coal.Other than that, I don't find any issue with your calculations. I thought I saw some problems, but on closer review I decided your assumptions were not bad assuming that the U from the ppm of coal was the main culprit.But why cannot there be sources of U nearby which are on the order of 1 percent?Also there is boron-11 that emit neutrons after absorbing alpha particles. This could be a source of neutrons generated from U either within the coal or nearby. How common is boron in coal? Not sure, but I know that it is one of the elements that is found in coal ash that gets people upset. The issue here would be that the production of neutrons is tied to the alpha decay which is many times the rate of spontaneous fission.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I did not mean that the irradiated coal argument was bad. I had written and then deleted some bad responses to the calculations that purported to show that irradiated coal idea would not work. The calculations are fine based on the assumptions made, but there are some issues with the assumptions.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The comment was not meant for you. I had initially posted a bad argument and deleted it. Sorry for the mixup. Yes I am sure about this. I recalled this from my experience with startup sources used in naval reactors, but I checked before posting.You should not be all that surprised that B-10 and B-11 have very nuclear properties. The cross section of B-11 for neutrons is negligible. B-11 if present would not interfere with neutron absorption by B-10, so I'm really curious about the relevance of your citation of the B-10 neutron absorption cross section as evidence that I mixed up the B-11 reaction. Yes we do use boron to absorb neutrons but primarily because of the B-10. Ill try to outline why this could work. Yes B-10 has a high cross section for neutrons (4000 barns?), but boron is only 20% of Boron. N-14 has a cross section of about 2 barns and is essentially all of the natural nitrogen. So there is maybe a 400 to 1 advantage for Boron vs Nitrogen absorption (assuming equal amounts of B and N and no direct shielding of nuclei). So a 2-3 orders of magnitude advantage to B. That would be the end of the issue for neutrons produced from spontaneous fission.If we want to calculate the rate of neutron absorption by N-14, then of course the competition between B-10 and N-14 is important, but so is the fact that there are 7-10 orders of magnitude more alpha decays than spontaneous fissions that produce neutrons directly. The available neutrons (from the B11 alpha reaction) and thus the amount of C-14 production from such a source should dwarf the amount caused by spontaneous fission of U235 and U238. And that's even taking into account the presence of B-10.Reference for the principle involved:Startup neutron source - Wikipedia

quote:

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Boron-11 can be added to the fuel; it emits neutrons by the (α,n) reaction to nitrogen-14. Deuterium in heavy water emits neutrons by (γ,n) reaction to 1H.[6]

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And as has been noted, there are other light nuclei which undergo similar reactions in the presence of alpha. Some of those nuclei have relatively high natural abundances.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

A 70 year old scientific paper locked behind a pay wall? Surely there are good reasons why that should not happen.

Here is a funny idea. Imagine what a creationist could achieve if one came here with the right attitude. Just by asking a few open ended, and honest questions without pretending to know better results in every swinging d, evolutionist knocking themselves out to provide honest answers that include all of the strong and weak points of their arguments. What more could a creationist, who wants to prepare his own strong case against evolution, desire from the other side.But none of them seem able to manage it. They all give themselves away because they cannot seem to ask questions without giving away their own dearly held opinion that the Bible is a science text. Quite amusing...Edited by NoNukes, : grammar improvement

You guys are talking about equilibrium as if it meant that the C-12/C-14 ratio were constant. That's not what equilibrium means. Equilibrium simply means that the rate of production is equal to the rate of removal. Removal is via decay and is proportional to the amount, while production depends on the neutron flux which is not constant.I don't know for a fact that C-14 is in equilibrium essentially all of the time, but it very well might be in near equilibrium with the exception of times shortly after a step or near-step increase in neutron flux.What is definitely true is that the atmospheric concentrations of C-14 vary offer time. Did Libby dispute that or did he simply insist on equilibrium?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I have to admit that this just adds to my confusion on this matter.This situation absolutely does not apply to C12-C14. C14 is NOT produced by a decay chain, and I find it difficult to believe that Libby thought any such thing. Surely when Libby discussed equilibrium he did not mean secular equilibrium. On what basis could he even have calculated such a thing? What decay is claimed to be producing C-14?In short, there is no secular equilibrium situation for C-14 to be a part of. So when Libby claimed that C-14 was in secular equilibrium, what could he possibly have meant? Was he actually unaware of how C-14 was produced?And when people claim that C-14 is not at equilibrium are they making exactly the same error?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Let's explore that idea of the 'same math' and its relevance to the question I have asked.Assuming that C-14 builds up from a decay chain from which the top of the decay chain is not being replenished, but is long lived compared to C-14. In that case, one could calculate a secular equilibrium value and then make statements about whether the current amount of C-14 is or is not at that value. That's the case for example for the U-Th decay chain, right?Now, let's consider the actual case where C-14 is produced cosmogenically. In that case, the 'equilbrium value' varies cosmogenically. In that case, to say that C-14 is or is not in equilibrium is to say that it is the correct proportion based on the current comsogenic rate? The cosmogenic rate depends not only on the amount of N-14 in the atmosphere, but also the neutron flux, with the latter depending on stuff like earth's magnetic field, perhaps the sun, and the perhaps the occurrence of super nova's that happened in the remote past.I disagree that the math is the same, except for the principle that equilibrium occurs when the rate of production is equal to the rate of C-14 decay. In the cosmo case described above, there is no single equilibrium value to 'oscillate around' as RAZD described. The equilibrium value itself varies. And given that value, the C-14 may or many not be in equilibrium.I'd appreciate being pointed out where my logic is incorrect, but I'm pretty sure that I have pointed out an issue with the discussion here. I don't believe the math does turn out to be exactly the same.