Plate Tectonics, Lunatics, and Dead Dinosaurs

Here are the questions:

1. Suppose you were arguing with someone about the Age of the Earth and your foe had an intrinsic distrust of science and its methods and so therefore would not believe anything to do with radioactive age dating. Outline what points of "common sense" about the nature of the Earth that you could use to demonstrate that the Earth is geologically old. You might want to consult this reference for some ideas.

2. Learn, by any means necessary (e.g. Internet or even the Library) who Alfred Wegener was and what he based his 1910-1915 Theory of Continental Drift on. Examine what happened to Wegener's career after he advanced his hypothesis. Explain how this is a good example of how the Scientific Establishment gets in the way of new ideas and progress in a discipline.

3. Wegener's ideas remained controversial for several decades. However, the controversy was laid to rest in a single experiment/observation. Using Internet resources or the library or whatever, explain what this observations was, when it occurred, and how it "revolutionized" the field of geology essentially overnight. This is one of the few examples in science where a single experiment drastically changes the field.

4. As many of you heard, or saw the movie, the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was thought to be the result of an asteroid impact. Since so many people are saying this it must be true. So, a) find out and report on how secure you think the evidence is that indeed an asteroid did strike the Earth and b) if this impact occurred how, in fact, did it cause a mass-extinction. In other words, what was the mechanism that extincted both ends of the food chain (e.g. the dinosaurs became extinct but so did most forms of ocean plankton). Something more than just blocking out the sun with some dust in the atmosphere must have occurred.