Earth's Interior
brittle, outer layer of Earth
What is the crust?
What are the opposing forces that shape the earth's surface?
What is constructive and destructive
Rock formed from intense heat and pressure
What is metamorphic
the greatest supply of fresh water is found here
In a glacier
Process when an oceanic plate goes under a continental plate
What is subduction?
thick, solid middle layer of Earth
What is the mantle?
These can be used to locate the edges of plates
What are volcanoes and mountains
This type of fracture breaks along regular, well-defined planes
What is cleavage?
Name two or three features formed by water erosion
What are meanders, oxbow lakes and V-shaped valleys?
Caused by stress in the Earth's plates
What are earthquakes?
made up of the crust and uppermost mantle
What is the lithosphere?
Weathering, gravity and wind are all involved in this process
What is erosion?
The type of sedimentary rock formed from pieces of pre-existing rock
What is a clastic rock?
How does groundwater form caves and sinkholes?
What is chemical erosion?
Causes magma in a volcano to rise towards the surface
The heat makes it less dense than the surrounding rock
Why was Wegner's theory of continental drift rejected at first?
How did continents drift across ocean floor?
These change V-shaped valley's into U-shaped valleys
What are glaciers?
This is the process where sedimentary can change to igneous or metamorphic
What is the rock cycle?
What type of ocean current brings cold water from the deep ocean up to the surface?
What is a density current? aka deep ocean current.
Due to seafloor spreading, the youngest rocks in the ocean floor are found where?
What is the mid-ocean ridge?
solid, innermost layer of earth
What is the inner core?
Name two or three of the methods geologists use to compare the age of sedimentary rocks.
radioactive isotopes, relative dating, index fossils
Use this to determine the absolute age of rocks
What is radioactive dating?
When a stream deposits sediments onto a flat surface, it is called.....
What is an alluvial fan?
Seismic waves that compress and expand are called
What is a P-wave?