🔥EARTH SCIENCES & ASTRONOMY

🔥Plate tectonics - theory that explains the:

• movement of the continents
• changes in Earth's crust caused by internal forces
🔥Plates - rigid blocks of crust and upper mantle
• move along the hot upper mantle
• make up the lithosphere
🔥Divergence
• 2 plates move away from each other
• hot mantle rock rises
• creates new sea floor
• Creates new oceanic crust (2-10 cm per yr.)
• Mid-Atlantic
🔥Convergence
• crust collides with another oceanic plate or continental plate
• oceanic crust sinks
• forms a trench
• forms volcano activity
• continent to continent plate collisions
🔥Subduction
• oceanic plate, dense, slides under continental plate
• oceanic plate plunges into the mantle
• forms a trench
🔥Trench
• forms b/c of subduction
• may cause a volcano
🔥Transform Fault
• 2 plates slide past one another
• parallel
🔥Rifting
• sea floor spreads
• occurs at mid-ocean ridges
• Red Sea
• new material is added to inner edges of separating plates
• plates grow larger, ocean basin widens
• how Pangaea was broken
• created Atlantic Ocean
🔥Atmosphere - Dry air components (3)
• dry gas
• water vapor
• Solid particles (dust from soil, etc.)
🔥Atmosphere dry gases (4)
• (N2) Nitrogen - 78.09%
• (O2) Oxygen - 20.95%
• (Ar) Argon - 0.93%
• (CO2) Carbon Dioxide - 0.03%
🔥Atmosphere (4 layers) - temperature based
• Troposphere (earth)
• Stratosphere
• Mesosphere
• Thermosphere (space)
🔥Troposphere
• closest to Earth's surface
• weather here
• most water vapor/dust
• increasing altitude = air temp down
• 7 miles long
🔥Stratosphere
• little water here
• clouds are rare
• Ozone Layer
• air temp = constant, increases with height (absorbs solar energy & ultraviolet rays from ozone
layer)
🔥Mesosphere
• air temp decreases with height
• coldest layer
🔥Thermosphere
• extends to space
• O2 molecules absorb energy from the Sun
• Temp. increases with height
• lower part = ionosphere
• upper part = exosphere
🔥Ionosphere
• lower part of thermosphere (space)
• charged particles (ions) & electrons here
• gases excited by solar radiation, gases give off light; glow in the sky
• aurora borealis
🔥Exosphere
• upper part of thermosphere
• gas molecules are far apart here
• Van Allen belts
• held together by Earth's magnetic field
🔥Orogeny - natural mountain building:
• by volcanic action
• tectonic plate collisions
• igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary rocks
🔥Himalayas
• highest mountains in world
• Mt. Everest
• India collided with Asia
• folded mountain (folding of rock layers)
🔥Fault-block Mountains
• Utah, AZ, NM
• plate movement = tension forces
• normal faults, hanging wall slides down
🔥Dome Mountains
• magma tries to push up through the crust
• doesn't break the surface
• blister on Earth's surface
🔥Up warped mountains
• Black Hills of South Dakota
• arching of the crust
• formed by rock thrust upward along high angle faults
🔥Mountain formation
• folding
• faulting
🔥Folded Mountains - Alps, Himalayas, And Appalachian Mts.
🔥Faults - fractures in crust b/c of tension/compression forces
🔥Dip-slip fault
• movement of plates is vertical & opposite
• normal faults when hanging wall moves down
🔥Reverse faults
• rock above fault plane moves up
• thrust faults
🔥Strike-Slip faults
• horizontal movement along the fault
• transform fault (along plate boundaries)
• San Andreas fault in CA --> transform fault
🔥Oblique- slip faults - vertical & horizontal movement
🔥Dormant volcano
• between eruptions
• still signs of internal activity - could erupt
🔥Ring of Fire
• faults & volcanoes
• belt of active faults/volcanoes in Pacific Ocean
🔥3 Types of Volcanic Mts.
• shield volcanoes
• cinder-cone volcanoes
• composite volcanoes
🔥Shield Volcanoes
• quiet eruptions
• lava from crater
• flows onto Earth, cools into igneous rock
• lava flow --> large volcanic mountain
• Mauna Loa in Hawaii = shield volcano
🔥Cinder-cone volcanoes
• explosive eruptions
• lava droplets - cool and harden into cinders and ash
• form steep cone hill
• small, form rapidly
🔥Composite volcanoes - built by lava flows & ash/cinder
• Mt. Fuji in Japan
• Mt. St. Helens in WA
• Mt. Vesuvius in Italy
🔥Lava cools - igneous rock
🔥Intrusive rock
• igneous rock
• formed below Earth's surface
• batholiths
• Sierra Nevada Mts.
Extrusive rock
• igneous rock
• formed at Earth's surface
🔥Dikes - old lava tubes formed when magma entered vertical fracture & hardened
🔥Sill
• magma between rock layers
• thin sheet
🔥Laccolith
• thicker than a sill
• doesn't flow easily
• pools & makes a surface dome
🔥Caldera
• formed by the collapse of the top of a volcano
• empties magma chamber
• forms a caldera/crater