Isotopic Dating / 03B / Leighty / Physical Geology (GLG 101IN)
A summary of the basics of isotopic age dating, with discussion of isotopes, half-lives, and radioactive decay processes and how they are used to determine the "number age" or absolute age of certain types of rocks.

0:00 Isotopic Dating
1:43 Isotopic geologic dating
3:39 What's an isotope?
5:23 Radioactive decay
6:18 Parents & daughters
7:23 How radioactive decay happens
7:37 Linear decay
9:14 Exponential decay
12:23 What is half-life?
13:40 Long half-life isotopes
16:28 Short half-life isotopes
18:13 The P:D ratio
19:47 Why does the P:D ratio matter?
21:14 Atomic clock
22:13 Getting a "number age"
23:21 Important constraints
24:23 Isotopic dating - what do we need?
25:23 Interpreting isotopic ages / igneous rocks
26:03 Interpreting isotopic ages / sedimentary rocks
26:27 Interpreting isotopic ages / metamorphic rocks
28:16 Using relative & isotopic ages
29:06 The geologic time scale
29:37 Geologic sequence diagram
31:24 Outro