Earth's History
What evidence found in layers of rock tells us about the living things that existed long ago?
What are fossils?
What is the slow process of breaking down rock into smaller pieces?
What is weathering?
What do you call the huge, floating plates that make up Earth's crust and cause continents to move?
What are tectonic plates?
The three main types of rocks.
What are sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous?
This natural hazard is a sudden shaking of the ground that can cause damage to buildings and roads.
What is an earthquake?
This is the science of studying Earth's history by looking at the layers of rock and the fossils inside.
What is geology?
This process is the movement of weathered rock and soil by forces like water, wind, or ice.
What is erosion?
What kind of natural disaster happens most often along the boundaries of tectonic plates?
What are earthquakes?
This type of plate boundary has plates moving away from each other.
What is a divergent boundary?
Give an example of how humans can reduce the impact of a natural hazard like an earthquake.
What is building more earthquake-resistant buildings?
True or False: Scientists know for a fact that dinosaurs looked and acted exactly like they do in the movies.
What is false? Scientists can only make inferences based on fossil evidence.
Give two examples of how water can cause weathering or erosion.
What are running water, freezing and thawing, or crashing waves?
Name two specific types of landforms that are often created where tectonic plates crash into each other.
What are mountain ranges or volcanoes?
What are the outer layer, inner layer, mantle, and crust?
This is the overflowing of a river or lake onto land that is normally dry.
What is a flood?
Give an example of how a plant or animal could become a fossil.
What is getting buried by mud or sand that hardens into rock?
Explain how a fast-moving river is different from a slow-moving river in terms of erosion and deposition.
What is that a fast-moving river causes more erosion, while a slow-moving river allows more deposition (dropping of sediment)?
What do maps of mountain ranges, trenches, and volcanoes show scientists about the movement of the Earth's crust?
What is that these features often occur in patterns along plate boundaries?
The four spheres of the earth.
What are the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere?
Besides moving away from an area with a high risk of natural hazards, what is another way humans can lessen their impacts?
What is improving the monitoring of natural events, such as volcanoes?
What is the main idea behind the phrase, "the present is the key to the past?"
What is that the same processes that shape the Earth today also shaped it long ago?
This powerful force of nature can cause landslides and move huge amounts of rock and soil.
What is a glacier?
Explain how scientists use fossils to infer how the continents were arranged in the past.
What is that similar fossils found on continents that are now far apart suggest the continents were once connected?
The theory that the land masses under the earth's crust are constantly in motion.
What is plate tectonics?
True or False: Humans can stop natural hazards from happening.
What is false? We cannot stop them, but we can take steps to reduce their impact.