Nature's Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520249752)

"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.

Author: Doug Macdougall
ISBN-10: 0520249755
ISBN-13: 9780520249752
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 06/30/2008
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.18h x 7.20w x 0.93d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/07/2008 pg. 54
Library Journal 07/15/2008 pg. 104