How Old is The Earth?
Our inquiry into the creation of the universe continued Tuesday with a demonstration of how old the earth is relative to the duration of time humans have lived on Earth. I used a 50-meter black ribbon to measure the age of the Earth. After we unrolled this long black ribbon out on the ball field we talked about how very old the earth must be, almost 5 billion years according to scientists. The children noticed a small red segment (about a centimeter) at the end of the ribbon. "This," I told them, "is how long humans have been on earth." Wow! A small lesson in humility! Since then, we have made a "primordial sea soup" out of yeast and water and watched it bubble and change. I related this to what the sea must have been like when life first appeared. We followed with the video, Ocean Origins, Four Billion Years in the Ocean.
Posted on September 11, 2008 1:26 PM | Permalink