Mount Everest Mysteries
This mountain moved during the 2015 earthquake and is central to the unit phenomenon.
What is Mount Everest?
A sudden shaking of Earth’s surface caused by movement in Earth’s crust.
What is an earthquake?
Earth’s outer solid layer is broken into large pieces called these.
What are tectonic plates?
The scientist often connected with continental drift is Alfred _____.
Who is Wegener?
The layer beneath Earth’s crust that plays an important role in plate movement is the _____.
What is the mantle?
In CER, the “C” stands for this.
What is claim?
After the 2015 Himalayan earthquake, Mount Everest was reported to shift in this general direction.
What is to the southwest?
Students noticed that earthquakes often happen in patterns near these surface features.
What are mountains, ridges, trenches, or plate boundaries?
When plates interact, they can cause earthquakes, mountain building, and changes to Earth’s surface. This idea is called _____.
What is plate tectonics?
Wegener’s big idea was that continents were once connected and later _____.
What is moved apart / drifted?
This type of heat-driven movement, first used in earlier units with fluids and air, helps explain movement below Earth’s surface too.
What is convection?
In CER, observations, measurements, and data are called this.
What is evidence?
Besides suddenly shifting during an earthquake, Mount Everest is also slowly changing in this way over time.
What is moving and changing elevation
When many earthquakes happen in the same region, scientists look for this to help explain what is happening there.
What is a pattern?
When two plates push toward each other, mountains can form because the crust is being _____.
pushed up, folded, or uplifted?
Similar fossils and rock patterns found on different continents supported the idea that continents were once _____.
What is connected?
Energy moving from hotter parts of Earth’s interior toward cooler areas near the surface helps drive this.
What is motion in the mantle / plate movement?
The part of CER that explains why the evidence supports the claim is this.
What is reasoning?
Ocean fossils found high in the Himalayas are surprising because they suggest this kind of environment once existed there.
What is an ocean or seafloor environment?
This kind of data helped students see that land can move even when the motion is very small.
What is GPS data?
Mount Everest is part of a mountain range formed where plates are doing this.
What is colliding / converging?
One piece of evidence Wegener used was that continents seemed to fit together like these.
What are puzzle pieces.
Even though mantle rock is solid, over long periods it can behave in a way that is somewhat like this.
What is a slowly flowing liquid?
A strong claim about mountains in this unit would say that mountains change because of this big Earth process.
What is plate movement / tectonic activity?
The big unit question students are trying to answer is: “What causes Earth’s surface to ______?”
What is change?
If earthquakes and mountains show up in the same places again and again, that suggests Earth’s surface is not random but instead is shaped by this.
What is a larger system or process of plate movement?
The slow movement of plates can explain gradual changes, while this event can explain sudden changes in location.
What is an earthquake?
Wegener’s ideas were not accepted at first because he lacked a convincing explanation for this.
What is how the continents moved / the mechanism causing movement?
A strong model for this unit explains that motion below Earth’s surface can cause the crust above it to do this.
What is move, bend, crack, rise, or sink?
Complete this reasoning statement: “When material below Earth’s surface moves, it can cause the plates above it to move. When plates move, Earth’s surface can _____.”
What is change in elevation or location?