Author Question: What is the principle of uniformitarianism? Why does the principle of uniformitarianism lead to the ... (Read 56 times)

Zulu123 · **on:** Jul 15, 2018

What is the principle of uniformitarianism? Why does the principle of uniformitarianism lead to the
conclusion that Earth's age is great? What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

What were some of the ways early scholars tried to determine the age of Earth? What will be an ideal response?

matt95 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 15, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Present-day processes have operated throughout geologic time; the laws of physics, chemistry, and
biology have operated throughout geologic time. Geologists can observe that the processes that are
currently shaping, and thus previously shaped Earth, occur very slowly or infrequently and cannot be
accommodated by a historic time scale.

Answer to Question 2

One melted iron balls of various diameters to see how quickly they cooled, and then extrapolated their
cooling rate to a ball the size of Earth. His answer was 75,000 years old. Another determined the
deposition rates of sediments and then the amount of time it would take to deposit the total thickness
of sedimentary rock in Earth's crust. The answer was vast, from younger than 1 million years to older
than 1 billion years, but wasn't a good estimate because sedimentation rates vary and many
sedimentary rocks have been removed by erosion and some compacted.