Spheres
This sphere encompasses all the water on Earth, including oceans, lakes, glaciers, and water vapor.
What is the Hydrosphere?
To be classified as a mineral, a substance must be solid, inorganic, naturally occurring, have a definite chemical composition, and this specific internal structure.
What is a Crystalline structure?
This rock type forms from the cooling and solidification of molten rock (magma or lava).
What is Igneous rock?
These two processes are required to turn an Igneous rock into Sediment.
What are Weathering and Erosion?
This meteorologist is known as the "father of plate tectonics".
Who is Alfred Wegener?
When a volcano erupts, releasing gas into the air, it is an interaction between the Geosphere and this sphere.
What is the Atmosphere?
This scale, ranging from 1 to 10, is used to measure a mineral's resistance to being scratched.
What is the Mohs Hardness Scale?
Marble is a metamorphic rock that forms from the metamorphism of this sedimentary parent rock.
What is Limestone?
For a sedimentary rock to become a metamorphic rock, it must undergo these two conditions.
What are Heat and Pressure?
The San Andreas Fault is an example of this type of plate boundary, where plates slide horizontally past each other.
What is a Transform boundary?
This sphere contains all the types of clouds.
*Daily Double*
What is the Hydrosphere?
This term describes the tendency of a mineral to break along flat, even surfaces.
What is Cleavage?
This type of sedimentary rock forms from the accumulation of plant and animal remains.
What is Organic Sedimentary Rock?
This process turns loose sediment into solid sedimentary rock through compaction.
What is Cementation?
This mechanism, driven by heat within the mantle, is the primary force moving the tectonic plates.
What are Convection Currents?
The process of transpiration, where plants release water vapor, is an interaction between these two spheres.
What are the Biosphere and the Hydrosphere?
This is the color of a mineral in its powdered form, often found by rubbing it against an unglazed porcelain plate.
What is Streak?
Igneous rocks that cool quickly on the Earth's surface and have small or no crystals are classified as this.
*Daily Double*
What is Extrusive?
If a metamorphic rock is buried deep enough to melt, it becomes this substance.
What is Magma?
At a convergent boundary between an oceanic plate and a continental plate, the denser oceanic plate sinks in this process.
What is Subduction?
Nitrogen is most abundant in the Atmosphere, but it must be "fixed" by bacteria in this sphere before it can be used by plants.
What is the Biosphere?
This group of minerals, which contains silicon and oxygen, makes up over 90% of Earth's crust.
What are Silicates?
Often found after explosive volcanic eruptions, this light-colored extrusive rock is filled with gas bubbles, making it the only rock that can float on water. Fun fact - it is also used as an exfoliating sponge.
What is Pumice?
When sediment settles out of wind or water and comes to rest, it is called this.
What is Deposition?
The stripes of magnetic polarity found on the seafloor that run parallel and symmetrical to mid-ocean ridges is evidence of this.
What is Seafloor Spreading?