Earth and Space - Structure of the Earth

Fill-in-the-blank flashcards covering Earth's structure (crust, mantle, core, lithosphere) and plate tectonics (boundaries, processes, features) based on the provided notes.

The outermost layer of the Earth is the __.

crust

Oceanic crust is denser and thinner and mainly composed of __.

basalt

Continental crust is less dense, thicker and mainly composed of __.

granite

The mantle lies below the crust and is up to 2900 km thick; the portion beneath the crust that forms the rigid shell with the crust is the __.

lithosphere

The core is the center of the Earth and has two parts: the liquid outer core and the solid inner core. The __ is the solid inner part.

inner core

The Outer Core is __ and made of nickel, iron and molten rock.

liquid

The Inner Core is solid __; hotter than the Sun’s surface!

iron/nickel

ALFRED WEGENER’S CONTINENTAL DRIFT HYPOTHESIS proposed that Earth’s continents were once joined as a single supercontinent, __, before breaking apart.

Pangea

The modern theory of plate tectonics explains movement through convection currents in the Earth’s __.

mantle

There are three types of plate boundaries: __, __, and __.

divergent; convergent; transform

Divergent boundaries create new crust from magma rising from the mantle, forming the __ Ridge and the Great Rift Valley.

Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Convergent boundaries are plate margins where two plates move toward each other and collide, often resulting in subduction where the denser oceanic crust dives beneath the other. This process is called __.

subduction

If two continental plates collide, neither subducts; instead, the crust buckles and folds to form the __.

Himalayas

Transform plate boundaries occur when two plates slide past each other horizontally; a famous example is the __.

San Andreas Fault