Think about it...

“Dost thou love life?

Then do not squander time,

for that is the stuff life is made of.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Maxims prefixed to Poor Richard's Almanac, 1757

The Amazing Time Machine

Fast Times...

Slow Times...

In-between Times...

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Class Average Generation Life Expectancy

It’s All Relative...

Gen’s Ago Event Years Ago

5 American Revolution 221 (1776)

12.62 Columbus finds America 505 (1492)

23.27 William the Conqueror 931 (1066)

50 A.D. 1 1996 (001)

500 Modern Man appears 20,000

1,625,000 Last dinosaur disappears 65 million

5,635,000 First dinosaur appears 225 million

112,500,000 Earth formed 4.5 billion

Texas Stadium

BIG Numbers

Ones 1

Tens 10

Hundreds 100

Thousands 1,000

Millions 1,000,000

Billions 1,000,000,000

Geologic Time

10-15

-12

-9

-6

-3

0

3

6

9

1000th of a second

1 second

1 minute

1 hour1 day

1 month1 year

1 thousand years

1 million years

1 billion years Age of the earth

Mountain range to be uplifted 3000m at 0.2mm/yr

Time for Atlantic Ocean to widen 1 km at 4 cm/yr

Human lifetimeMeasurable erosion of rivers and shorelines

Floods

Earthquake waves go through and around Earth

Time for 1 sound wave detectable by human ears

Nuclear ProcessesTime in years

Geologic Time ScaleEon Era Period Epoch Age

Quaternary Recent

Pleistocene Present

Pliocene

Cenozoic Miocene to

Tertiary Oligocene

Eocene 60-65 m.y.a.

Paleocene

Phanerozoic Cretaceous 60-65 m.y.a

Mesozoic Jurassic to

Triassic 230 m.y.a.

Permian

Pennsylvanian 230 m.y.a.

Mississippian

Paleozoic Devonian to

Silurian

Ordovician 600 m.y.a.

Cambrian

Cryptozoic Pre-Cambrian 600 m.y.a. to 4.6+ b.y.a.

The Geologic Clock

Football Field

Earth forms (4.6 b.y.a.)

1st microscopic life (3.5 b.y.a.)

1st fossil of large life-like sponges & jellyfish

1st dinosaur appeared

Today

0 50 100

Age

of D

inos

aurs

Hum

an b

eing

s ap

pear

10 yards

One YearJanuary 1, midnight 4.6 b.y.a. formation of the earth

early to mid-March 3.5-3.8 b.y.a. first life on earth

early-May 3 b.y.a. photosynthesis; blue-green algae

mid-November 570 m.y.a. first eukaryotic cells; shelled animals

Thanksgiving 400 m.y.a. Fish, vertebrates, land plants

December 7 300 m.y.a. Large swamps (coal), insects, reptiles

December 11 250 m.y.a. Beginning of the age of reptiles

December 15 200 m.y.a. Dinosaurs

December 20 130-140 m.y.a.Dinosaurs, fish, flowering plants

December 25 65 m.y.a. Mass extinction of dinosaurs

December 31, 4 pm 4 m.y.a. Earliest fossils of genus Homo

11:58:30 12,000 y.a. All of recorded history

11:59:46 2,000 y.a. Christian Era

A Piece of Pie?

Time’s Up!