Untitled Flashcard Set

Chapter 1
Key terms:
Asthenosphere, atmosphere, Crust, Earth System, Galaxies, lithosphere, magnetic field,
Moho, solar system, stellar wind, Van Allen belt.
Questions from instructor:
1. What is the most common mineral within the Earth and in the crust?
2. What is the densest layer of the Earth?
3. How the temperature and pressure change if moving into the Earth?
4. Which two gases dominate present atmosphere around the Earth?
5. Describe how the Doppler effect works.
6. What does the red shift of the galaxies tell us about their motion with respect to the
Earth.
7. Describe how the Moon was formed.
8. What are principal layers of the Earth?

Chapter 2
Key terms:
Accretionary prism, APWP, Asthenosphere, Continental drift, Continental rift,
convergent plate boundary, divergent plate boundary, fracture zone, hot-spot volcanoes,
Mid-ocean ridge, Pangaea, Sea-floor spreading, subduction, transform plate boundary,
triple junction.
Questions from instructor:
1. What evidences collected by Wegener supported his hypothesis?
2. Compare the lithosphere and asthenospere.
3. Discuss the change of thickness and the age of the rocks in the oceanic crust.
4. Why were geologists initially skeptical of Wegener’s theory of continental drift?
5. What are the major geologic features of a convergent boundary?

Chapter 3
Key terms:
Cleavage, facet, luster, Mohs hardness scale, silicates, streak.
Questions from instructor:
1. What equipment is used to detect the internal ordering of mineral crystals?
2. What does it mean that minerals are homogeneous substances?
3. What mineral is most abundant in the Earth?

Chapter 4 (including Interlude A)
Key terms:
Bedding, clastic, metamorphic foliation, outcrop,
batholith, Bowen’s reaction series, dike, sill, laccolith, partial melting, pluton, stoping,
xenoliths.
Questions from instructor:
1. Compare the lava and magma, and the extrusive and intrusive rocks.
2. What is the distinction between a pluton and a batholiths?
3. How to identify the different igneous rocks?
4. How did the first rocks on the planet form?

Chapter 6 (including Interlude B)
Key terms:
Weathering, Erosion, Physical weathering, Chemical weathering, Hydrolysis, Oxidation,
Lithification, Biochemical sedimentary rock, Strata, Soil horizon, sorting.
Questions from instructor:
1. What kind of rocks are majority at the surface of the Earth?
2. Talk about the different types of weathering and their definitions.
3. What are the three major types of chemical weathering? Their definitions?
4. How does the soil profile form? Discuss the characteristics of different horizons in
the soil profile?
5. What are the four major divisions of sedimentary rocks? What is the basis for this
classification?
6. What are clastic or detrital sedimentary rocks? Discuss the characteristics of
different types based on grain size?

7. Do all chemical sedimentary rocks have the same composition? What conditions
produce evaporites?

Chapter 7
Key terms:
Foliation, gneiss, metamorphic facies, metamorphic grade, metamorphism, slaty
cleavage, protolith, thermal metamorphism
Questions from instructor:
1. What conditions could induce metamorphism?
2. What is the primary between quartzite and metasnadstone?
3. Discuss the foliated and non-foliated metamorphic rocks and give examples.
4. Which types of metamorphism affects the greatest volume of rock?
5. The mineral assemblage within metamorphic rock is depended upon two
conditions. What are these two conditions?