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Earth

Terms in this set (80)

The supercontinent in the continental drift hypothesis was called ____.
Pangea
What kind of plate boundary occurs where two plates grind past each other without destroying or producing lithosphere?
transform fault boundary
The geocentric model of the universe stated that ____.
Earth was the center of the universe
What forms when one oceanic plate is forced beneath another plate?
subduction zone
Which force is most responsible for the formation of a star?
gravity
How long does it take the moon to go from full-moon phase to new-moon phase?
two weeks
An earthquake's epicenter is ____.
The place on the surface directly above focus
The resistance of a mineral to being scratched is called
hardness
The true shape of planetary orbits was discovered by ____.
Kepler
Which of the following is a geographic example of a transform fault boundary?
San Andreas Fault
Which number represents "one million?"
10^6
The appearance or quality of light reflected from the surface of a mineral is called ____.
Luster
How does the age of seafloor sediments change with increasing distance from the ocean ridge?
age increases
The first early astronomer to propose a sun-centered solar system was ____.
Copernicus
A fault is ____.
a fracture in the Earth where movement has occurred
Which represents the number 5,400,000,000?
5.4 x 10^9
When is the noon sun directly overhead in Indiana?
the sun is never directly overhead in Indiana
The Hawaiian Islands were formed when the Pacific Plate moved over ____.
hot spot
Deep ocean trenches are associated with ____.
subduction zones
Seasons are caused by ____.
The tilt of the Earth's axis
Folding is usually the result of ____.
compressional stresses
Typical rates of seafloor spreading are approximately ____.
5 centimeters per year
The most common mineral group in Earth's crust is the ____.
Silicates
What will be the final stage in the sun's life cycle?
Black dwarf
The volcanic landforms at divergent ocean plate boundaries are ____.
oceanic ridges
What type of boundary occurs where two plates move together, causing one plate to descend into the mantle beneath the other plate?
convergent boundary
The tendency of minerals to break along smooth flat surfaces is called ____.
cleavage
In the plate tectonic theory, a plate can be made up of ____.
both continental and oceanic lithosphere
According to the theory of plate tectonics, ____.
the lithosphere is divided into plates
Most of the information about Earth's interior was obtained by studying ____.
Earthquake waves
What is the minimum number of seismic stations that is needed to determine the location of an earthquake's epicenter?
3
New ocean crust is formed at ____.
divergent boundaries
Which of the following is NOT one of the eight most common elements in Earth's continental crust?
Carbon
At a transform fault boundary, ____.
lithosphere is neither destroyed nor produced
Mohs scale is used to determine what property of minerals?
hardness
Which represents the number 2.3 X 107 ?
23,000,000
Most of the active volcanoes on Earth are located in a belt known as the ____.
Ring of Fire
When water freezes, its volume ____.
increases
The chemical weathering of feldspar produces ____.
clay minerals
Use Figure 5-1 to determine what a soil is called if it has 20 percent clay, 60 percent silt, and 20 percent sand.
silty loam
What are the proportions of clay, silt, and sand shown at point C in Figure 5-1?
Clay 10; silt 20; sand 70
If a river originates 200 meters above sea level and travels 400 kilometers to the ocean, what is the average gradient in meters per kilometer?
0.5 m/km
The flat portion of a valley floor adjacent to a stream channel is called a ____.
floodplain
A drainage basin is ____.
the land area that contributes water to a stream
What are the boundaries called that separate streams in adjacent drainage basins?
divides
The percentage of the total volume of rock or sediment that consists of pore spaces is called ____.
Porosity
Which of the following is a measure of a material's ability to transmit fluids through interconnected pore spaces?
Permeability
Springs form where ____.
the water table intersects the ground surface
Where do glaciers form?
in areas where more snow falls than melts
What is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere?
Nitrogen
What is the lowest layer of the atmosphere?
Troposphere
Which gas is most important for understanding atmospheric processes?
water vapor
Rain, snow, sleet, and hail are all examples of ____.
precipitation
The change of state from a gas to a liquid is called ____.
condensation
Air that has reached its water-vapor capacity is said to be ____.
saturated
The ratio of air's water-vapor content to its capacity to hold water vapor at that same temperature is the ____.
Relative humidity
What is true about relative humidity?
It indicates how near the air is to saturation
When two temperatures read nearly the same on a psychrometer, you can conclude that ____.
the air has a high relative humidity
If the water-vapor content of air remains constant, lowering air temperature causes a(n) ____.
increase in relative humidity
The force exerted by the weight of the air above is called ____.
air pressure
In which direction is air pressure exerted?
all directions
Which force generates winds?
pressure differences
Variations in air pressure from place to place are the principal cause of ____.
wind
In the Northern Hemisphere, winds associated with a low-pressure system blow ____.
counterclockwise toward the center
In the Northern Hemisphere, winds associated with a high-pressure system blow ____.
clockwise and outward from the center
Near the equator, rising air is associated with a pressure zone known as the ____.
equatorial low
Waves begin to "feel bottom" when water depth is ____.
Equal to half of the wavelength
The movement of water that parallels the shore within the surf zone is called ____.
longshore current
The physical, chemical, and biological laws that operate today have also operated in the geologic past. This statement relates to the principle of ____.
Uniformitarianism
The present is the key to the past. This statement rephrases the ____.
Principle of Uniformitarianism
According to the principle of cross-cutting relationships, an intrusive rock body is ____.
younger than the rocks into which it intrudes
An unconformity is a(n) ____.
gap in the rock record
In what type of rocks are most fossils found?
sedimentary rocks
The time it takes for 50% of the nuclei in a radioactive sample to decay to its stable isotope is called ____.
half-life
Assume you began with 10 g of a radioactive parent isotope. How many grams of parent isotope will be present in the sample after 2 half-lives?
2.5 g
Radiometric dating is possible because the rates of decay of radioactive isotopes ____.
are constant
If the half-life of an unstable isotope is 10,000 years, and only 1/8 of the radioactive parent remains in a sample, how old is the sample?
30,000 years old
What length of time does the geologic time scale cover?
4.6 billion years
What is the currently accepted age of Earth?
4.6 billion years
When did abundant fossil evidence appear in the geologic record?
540 million years ago
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