/ English Dictionary |
GEOLOGICAL DATING
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Use of chemical analysis to estimate the age of geological specimens
Synonyms:
dating; geological dating
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("geological dating" is a kind of...):
chemical analysis; qualitative analysis (the act of decomposing a substance into its constituent elements)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "geological dating"):
potassium-argon dating (geological dating that relies on the proportions of radioactive potassium in a rock sample and its decay product, argon)
carbon-14 dating; carbon dating; radiocarbon dating (a chemical analysis used to determine the age of organic materials based on their content of the radioisotope carbon 14; believed to be reliable up to 40,000 years)
rubidium-strontium dating (geological dating based on the proportions of radioactive rubidium into its decay product strontium; radioactive rubidium has a half-life of 47,000,000,000 years)