Chapters 1-2
What is the shape of the earth?
Oblate Spheroid (ball being squished from top and bottom)
What is the hardest mineral on the Mohs Hardness Scale?
The diamond is the hardest mineral.
How do you calculate volume?
You multiply (length)(width)(height).
What three agents are responsible for decomposition?
Bacteria, Fungi, and Chemicals
What is the Uniformitarianism "catch phrase"?
"The present is the key to the past"
What does the prefix mili mean?
Mili is 0.001.
What is the streak of a mineral?
It is the color of the mineral when it is a powder.
How many miles deep is the lithosphere?
62 miles
What is the Sea Lily (#20 in our rock kit) an example of.
It is an example of a crinoid.
What is an isotope?
Isotope: atoms that have the same number of protons but different number of neutrons
What is the name for all the water on the earth, regardless of its phase?
Hydrosphere
What is effervescence?
Effervescence is the bubbling of a mineral when it is exposed to acid.
What direction is the Asia continental plate moving?
It is moving SE.
Which fossil forms first the Mold or the Cast?
The Mold is created first.
Name the three parts of an atom and their charges.
Protons (positive), Neutrons (neutral), and electrons (negative)
What percent of the earth's volume is made up of the mantle?
85%
Tell what the three basic types of rock are, and describe how each is formed.
Igneous: rock formed from the freezing of magma or lava. Sedimentary: rock formed from small particles accumulating and then sticking together. Metamorphic: rock formed from existing rock (sedimentary or igneous) that was subjected to heat and/or pressure
Name the three main types of faults. (not yours, mine, and ours)
They are dip-slip, strike-slip, and oblique-slip.
Name the seven types of fossils.
Amber, Ice, Mold, Cast, Compression, Trace, and Petrifaction
What is radiometric dating?
Radiometric dating is the process by which radioactive decay is used to determine the age of a specimen
Give the proper order of the soil horizons.
Name three of the four minerals that make up granite.
Quartz, Muscovite Mica, Potassium Feldspar, and Biotite.
Name the two types of earthquake scales and tell what their ranges are.
Richter Scale (1 to 10)
Mercalli Scale (I to XII)
What is a trace fossil? Give two examples.
A trace fossil is something left by an organism (the actual organism is gone). Some examples are tracks, burrows, coprolite, and bite marks.
Name the the three ways a radioactive isotope can decay, and describe what each does.
Beta decay: neutron emits an electron to become a proton. Electron capture: proton absorbs an electron to become a neutron. Alpha decay: nucleus ejects two protons & two neutrons as a single particle (rather than change within, actually spits out part)