Weathering and Erosion
Examples of this chemical weathering process include iron-bearing minerals turning to rust.
Oxidation
The thin, outermost solid layer of the Earth that is broken into tectonic plates.
Crust
This scale from 1 to 10 measures a mineral's resistance to being scratched.
Mohs Hardness Scale
The preserved remains or traces of ancient organisms
Fossil
This instrument is used to record and measure the strength of ground shaking
Seismograph
Huge sheets of slow-moving ice that carve out deep valleys and reshape the land.
Glacier
The famous, highly active transform fault line running through California that is responsible for many of the state's earthquakes.
San Andreas Fault
This term describes the color of the powder a mineral leaves behind when dragged across a porcelain plate.
Streak
The largest and longest division of geologic time
Eon
This massive ocean wave is typically triggered by an underwater earthquake displacing a large volume of water
Tsunami
Silt and sediment dropping and building up on the side or bank of a river is an example of this third related process.
Deposition
The name of the process that occurs at a convergent boundary where a denser oceanic plate sinks beneath a lighter continental plate into the mantle.
Subduction
This shiny, black volcanic glass cools so quickly that absolutely no crystals have time to grow.
Obsidian
The branch of geology that studies rock layers and their relationship to Earth's history.
Stratigraphy
This supercontinent existed about 335 million years ago before breaking apart via continental drift.
Pangaea
True or False: Weathering can occur chemically and physically without any movement of rock fragments
True
The upper, semi-fluid layer of the mantle that tectonic plates float and move around on.
Asthenosphere
Formed primarily from the calcium carbonate skeletons of marine organisms, this rock is highly abundant in places like Florida.
Periods on the geologic time scale are divided into these smaller units
Epochs
This type of rock forms when melted lava or magma cools and solidifies
Igneous rock
The two main ways wind drives erosion in dry environments
Deflation and Abrasion
The famous German meteorologist who first proposed the comprehensive theory of Continental Drift in 1912.
Alfred Wegener
Geologists use this specific term to describe the original, unaltered "parent rock" before it was metamorphosed.
protolith
This vast stretch of time covers 88% of Earth's history before the complex life of the Cambrian period.
Precambrian
This catastrophic mass extinction event at the end of the Permian period is considered the Earth's worst extinction event.
Permian-Triassic extinction (or The Great Dying)