Weather
While the sun moves water up, this force is responsible for pulling water back down as precipitation or runoff.
What is gravity?
What is density?
These rocks are formed over millions of years as layers of sand, mud, and pebbles are pressed together.
Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur along the "edges" of tectonic plates, which are known as these.
What are plate boundaries?
This law states that in an undisturbed stack of rock layers, the oldest layer is at the bottom and the youngest is at the top.
What is the law of superposition?
This type of front occurs when a fast-moving cold air mass slides under a warm air mass, often causing thunderstorms.
What is a cold front?
Earth’s rotation causes winds to curve instead of moving in a straight line, a phenomenon known by this name.
What is the Coriolis Effect?
These processes can turn an igneous and sedimentary rock into a metamorphic rock.
What are heat and pressure?
This massive "ring" in the ocean is home to the majority of Earth’s active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
What is the Pacific Ring of Fire?
The era of Earth's history in which large reptiles became the dominant species.
What is the Mesozoic era?
This is the specific process where plants "sweat," releasing water vapor from their leaves into the atmosphere.
What is transpiration?
The name given to the measurement of how far or close a place is from the equator.
What is latitude?
This surface feature forms when sediment carried by a river gets deposited as the river enters a larger body of water.
What is a delta?
This type of boundary occurs when two plates slide past each other, often causing massive earthquakes like those along the San Andreas Fault.
What is transform boundary?
Scientists use these specific fossils—which belonged to organisms that lived for a short time but were found all over the world—to date rock layers.
What are index fossils?
This is the term for "softening the blow" of a hazard, such as building a sea wall to prevent flooding.
What is mitigation?
Driven by global winds and differences in water density, these help regulate Earth’s climate by distributing thermal energy around the planet.
What are ocean currents?
This process occurs when moving ice sheets scrape and carve rock from Earth’s surface.
What is a glacial erosion?
An area where one tectonic plate is forced under another; this process is the primary reason we find chains of volcanoes along certain coastlines.
This is the scientific term for "rock layers"
What are strata?
This is what we call an air mass that forms over the ocean in a place near the equator
What is maritime tropical
A famous ocean current that passes near SC and explains why Great Britain has a milder climate than Canada even when they are at similar distances from the equator.
What is the Gulf Stream?
By moving water away from a slope, these systems reduce ground saturation and help prevent the soil from turning into a landslide.
What are drainage systems?
At a divergent boundary on the ocean floor, plates pull apart and allow magma to rise and cool, a process that creates this specific type of volcanic mountain range.
What is a mid-ocean ridge?
This is a rock formation created when magma cools and solidifies before it reaches the surface. It forms after the layers it cuts through.
What is an igneous intrusion?