Volcanic Eruptions of Hawaii and Potassium-Argon Radiometric Dating

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Potassium-Argon Radiometric Dating
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The attached diagram describes the key elements of potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating. The most important of several criteria for this method is to have the timer set to zero. This can occur when a pancake-syrup-like runny lava, such as that from eruptions of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, flows down over a countryside. When the lava cools slowly enough, it allows for formation of mineral crystals that contain potassium-40 but don’t contain argon-40. In the 1950s and 60s, geochemists conducted careful tests to determine what type of volcanic eruption of lava can satisfy this critical criterion. The K-Ar method was applied to rocks from the Hawaiian Islands and the Emperor Seamounts (a chain of mostly undersea mountains located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and extending toward the coast of Russia), returning ages up to 80 million years up north near the Aleutian Islands. In the attached diagram, note that K-Ar dating cannot be applied to rocks less than about 100,000 years old. This is because the half-life of 40K is 1.25 billion years, and too little 40Ar* has been formed to be measured accurately.
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[@konroh2]

How do we know AR 40* isn't in the dated rock from the beginning? And if what we have is the chocolate chip cookie how do we know where we should date certain items?

[@DuelScreen]

Nicely explained

[@bluepurpleandscarlett9885]

Always the same errors--assumptions of initial starting conditions and uniform decay rates.