Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or being a geologic dating method relying on the percentage of potassium in a specimen that has radioactively decayed to argon.
Etymologies
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Examples
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This formula depends on the laws of physics remaining constant over time … Some creationists have argued that God increased the rate of potassium-argon decay during the first few days of Creation, thus causing the potassium-argon dating method to give erroneously old date readings.
Blast From the Past 2010
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A real scientist might even note that there are a variety of other radioisotopes used for dating (potassium-argon, for instance) and these techniques give highly reproducible results within a small and consistent range of error.
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There are still other techniques: potassium-argon dating, thermoluminescence dating, hydration dating, fission-track dating.
The Nature of Technology W. Brain Arthur 2009
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So, Zinj was the earliest but I think one of the most important things that the work at Olduvai provided, and it didn't provide it in '59 but a year later, was its context involved the possibility of dating through potassium-argon and later argon-argon radiometric dating and for the first time the very considerable antiquity of early hominids was established.
Zinj and the Leakeys 2009
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Botanical and geological significance of potassium-argon dates from the Juan Fernández Islands.
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In potassium-argon dating used for the oldest rocks, there's a plus/minus accuracy of 500 million years!
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The age was probably determined through potassium-argon dating since radiocarbon dating is only good for the first 10,000 years.
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Anything over 10,000 years requires potassium-argon dating.
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Another technique, potassium-argon dating, works on minerals, but tends to be accurate only when artifacts are between 100,000 and 4.3 billion years old.
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Postumus, Marcus Cassianius Latinius, Roman emperor potassium-argon dating potato blight
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