Earth: The Inside Story
This Earth system includes all living organisms.
What is the biosphere?
Rocks formed when magma or lava cools and solidifies are called these.
What are igneous rocks?
This supercontinent contained most of Earth's landmasses before they separated.
What is Pangaea?
These are preserved remains or evidence of ancient organisms.
What are fossils?
The breaking down of rocks by physical forces without changing their chemical composition is called this.
What is mechanical weathering?
This Earth system includes all of Earth's water, including oceans, groundwater, glaciers, and rivers.
What is the hydrosphere?
This property describes how a mineral reflects light.
What is luster?
Alfred Wegener proposed this theory to explain how continents had once been joined and later moved apart.
What is continental drift?
Scientists who study fossils and ancient life are called this.
What are paleontologists?
Water freezing inside cracks in rocks and expanding causes this type of mechanical weathering.
What is frost wedging?
The crust and uppermost portion of the mantle together make up this rigid layer.
What is the lithosphere?
This scale is used to measure the hardness of minerals.
What is the Mohs scale?
These boundaries occur where two plates move apart and can produce mid-ocean ridges and rift valleys.
What are divergent boundaries?
This type of fossil forms when an organism leaves an impression in sediment.
What is a mold?
This is the underground level below which the ground is completely saturated with water.
What is the water table?
Unlike the solid inner core, this layer of Earth's core is liquid and helps generate Earth's magnetic field.
What is the outer core?
A mineral breaking along smooth, flat surfaces is called this.
What is cleavage?
At this type of convergent boundary, one oceanic plate is forced beneath a continental plate.
What is a continental-oceanic convergent boundary?
This type of fossil forms when a mold is filled with minerals or sediment.
What is a cast?
The amount of empty space within a rock is called this, while the ability of water to move through the rock is called this.
What are porosity and permeability?
Heat transfer through this process creates movement within the mantle and helps drive plate tectonics.
What are convection currents?
This test reveals the color of a mineral in powdered form, while this property compares its density to water.
What are streak and specific gravity?
Harry Hess proposed this process, which is supported by magnetic striping on the ocean floor.
What is seafloor spreading?
This method uses the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the numerical age of rocks or fossils.
What is radiometric dating?
Carbonic acid dissolves this type of rock, eventually creating solution caves and karst topography.
What is limestone?