Nature's Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything [Hardcover]

Doug Macdougall (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520249755 | ISBN-13: 978-0520249752 | Publication Date: June 30, 2008 | Edition: 1

"Radioactivity is like a clock that never needs adjusting," writes Doug Macdougall. "It would be hard to design a more reliable timekeeper." In Nature's Clocks, Macdougall tells how scientists who were seeking to understand the past arrived at the ingenious techniques they now use to determine the age of objects and organisms. By examining radiocarbon (C-14) dating--the best known of these methods--and several other techniques that geologists use to decode the distant past, Macdougall unwraps the last century's advances, explaining how they reveal the age of our fossil ancestors such as "Lucy," the timing of the dinosaurs' extinction, and the precise ages of tiny mineral grains that date from the beginning of the earth's history. In lively and accessible prose, he describes how the science of geochronology has developed and flourished. Relating these advances through the stories of the scientists themselves--James Hutton, William Smith, Arthur Holmes, Ernest Rutherford, Willard Libby, and Clair Patterson--Macdougall shows how they used ingenuity and inspiration to construct one of modern science's most significant accomplishments: a timescale for the earth's evolution and human prehistory.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When most people read about dating an ancient artifact, we think of carbon-14 dating. But as earth scientist Macdougall (Frozen Earth) tells readers, carbon dating works only if the object contains carbon, and then it can't be more than about 50,000 years old. Many other elements are radioactive, allowing, for example, for a potassium-argon dating system of volcanic and Precambrian rocks, and other applications in studying archeology and human evolution. Macdougall says that scientists have used these various radiometric dating systems for research as far-flung as dating the age of the solar system, figuring out when humans immigrated to the North America and when the Neanderthals died out, determining that a huge tsunami was created by a massive earthquake off the Northwest Pacific Coast in 1700 and nailing down the age of the Shroud of Turin (it dates to the Middle Ages, though controversy persists). Science buffs from all fields along with general readers will find this a helpful handbook on how we are now able to travel to the distant past. B&w photos, line drawings, map. (June)
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Review

"A helpful handbook on how we are now able to travel to the distant past."--Publishers Weekly

"The heart of the book reveals ingenious science."--Library Journal

"For time-conscious readers, Nature's Clocks provides satisfaction beyond measure."--Washington Post Book World

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520249755
• ISBN-13: 978-0520249752
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Doug Macdougall is a geologist and educator who worked on the faculty of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego for over thirty years. His books on geology and the earth sciences are aimed at general readers and have been translated into seven languages. He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he spends most of his time writing. His idea of heaven is paddling his old prospector canoe in his native Ontario.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How geoloists and archaeologists date rocks, fossils, and artefacts, July 31, 2008

By 

C. Griffith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nature's Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (Hardcover)

The main focus of this book is on how objects can be dated using measurements of radioactive isotopes and their products, that is the elements and isotopes that form after radioactive decay.
The author begins with a brief discussion of ideas about the earth's duration before the advent of dating techniques using radioactive isotopes. Here he discusses the duration of the earth as inferred from the Bible, the influence of James Hutton in moving scientific opinion towards a longer time scale, William Smith's use of fossils to come to a relative (that is, the order in which rocks were formed, but not when they were formed) dating of sedimentary rocks, and the conflict in the later half of the 19th century between geologists' belief in a long earth history and the physicist Lord Kelvin's model of a relatively short (20 million years in some versions of the model) duration for the earth.
With the discovery of radioactivity, in the early 20th century it became apparent that radioactive decay could be used a sort of clock. The physicist Ernest Rutherford was one of the first to attempt to estimate geological time scales using radioactive decay. The British geologist Arthur Holmes in his early work was one of the first geologist's to use the decay of uranium to lead to estimate geological time scales. These early efforts were hampered by the lack of understanding that different isotopes of the same element exist, and that there can be more than one radioactive isotope of an element.
As understanding of the complexity of the problem increased, more accurate methods resulted. Claire Patterson, at the University of Chicago and later at Caltech, came up with the roughly 4.55 billion year estimate of the duration of the earth's existence in the 1950s using the uranium to lead decay series, after much difficulty in eliminating laboratory contamination of lead from leaded gasoline. Starting in the 1940s at the University of Chicago, Libby and his graduate students developed carbon 14 dating, which is suitable for dating objects that contain carbon from roughly the last 50,000 years and is therefore useful for archaeologists, and for geologists who study ice ages. One thing I was interested to learn is that the carbon 14 method is the only one that involves the actual counting of radioactive decay; the other methods, such as uranium to lead or potasssium argon, actually require the measurement of the "parent" element and isotope (such as uranium) and the "daughter" element and isotope (such as lead) with a mass spectrometer, because radioactive decay is too slow for practical counting from small samples of these isotopes.
Each radioactive method is suitable for different time spans, The uranium lead method is suitable for very long (billions, hundreds of millios of years) time spans, the potsssium argon method for intermediate (in a geological sense!) time spans, and carbon 14 for the last 50,000 years or so. Because carbon 14 is produced at varying rates over time in the upper atmosphere (from the interaction of cosmic radiation with molecules in the air), to improve its accuracy it is calibrated with (mainly) tree ring data. The calibration at the moment goes back about 26,000 years.
Recent developments have allowed for collecting information from smaller samples, such as individual crystals of zircon,
I found the book easy to read. The author includes two appendices with some discussion of the mathematics of radioactive decay, a chart of the geological time scale, and the periodic table of the chemical elements.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply brilliant, July 29, 2010

By 

James Wagner - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nature's Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (Paperback)

Nature's Clocks is about the history of dating the age of the earth, from Newton to Kelvin to Marie Curie and many other scientists who made important contributions to this subject. Though McDougall also lightly touches on other dating methods like tree rings, the bulk of the book deals with radiometric dating and carbon-14 dating and how it relates to geology, archaeology etc.

What makes this book an absolute gem are two things. Firstly, McDougall has interesting anecdotes about lots of discoveries and the scientists who discovered them - this really makes the subject come alive. Secondly, he makes difficult topics like radiometric dating accessible in layman-friendly terms, and in great detail.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in how the earth is dated.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Ingenuity At Work, September 10, 2008

By 

G. Poirier (Orleans, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nature's Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (Hardcover)

This excellent book provides an overview of how things or events from the past can be dated - from when the earth formed to events in human history. As the author points out, although much of the distant past can be dated in a relative way, i.e., by classifying events in the order in which they occurred, the determination of actual ages has received an incredible boost through the use of radioactive isotopes of certain elements. The author weaves this fascinating tale very well - from the discovery of radioactivity, through the discovery of its use in dating ancient artifacts to refining the age of the earth and the timing of milestones in human evolution. The individuals who did the early pioneering work, as well as those who currently strive for greater precision and refinement in this field, play prominent roles in this gripping story which clearly illustrates how science works. The writing style is clear, friendly, authoritative, very engaging and quite accessible. This book appears to have been aimed at broad readership; specialized terminology is well explained when first used in the main text and a glossary of technical terms can be found at the back of the book. But also, an appendix is included that concentrates on some of the mathematical formulas involved, for those who are more mathematically/technically inclined. Consequently, this book can be enjoyed by anyone, although science buffs may consider it a particularly special treat.