Geography-Physical Geography

Definitions:

Core: A solid iron core

Mantle/Asthenosphere:

-tough liquid rock

-convection currents

Crust/Lithosphere:

-surface we live on

-floats on the mantle

-Oceanic and Continental

Continental Drift: Land masses in constant motion

Pangaea: the supercontinent that was made up of all the continents 300 million years ago

Plate Tectonics: Earths crust is broken into 20 tectonic plates that move by convection currents
Convection Currents: Similar to conveyor belts, the movement pushes and pulls the earth’s crust

Climate Graphs: A graph that summarizes climate data for a particular location

Transform Faulting: (sliding/ friction) Continental/Oceanic + Continental/Oceanic

Subduction: (under/”duck!”) Continental + Oceanic

Folding:(head on/ →←) Continental + Continental

Igneous Rock: formed when magma or lava cools and hardens (nickel, copper, silver, and gold)

  • All rocks come from Igneous rocks

  • Can form into Extrusive or Intrusive rocks

  • Extrusive= fast cooling lava → Intrusive = slow cooling magma

Sedimentary Rock: when eroded parts of sedimentary/igneous rocks build up under water over time

  • The weight of the water compresses the layers into rock

  • Dead plants and animals sometimes get compressed

Metamorphic Rock: (morph= to change) formed when sedimentary/igneous rocks have been altered (physically and chemically) with extreme heat and pressure

  • diamonds

Continental Glacier: covers large areas of land (smooths the landscape)

Alpine Glacier: Found only in mountains(creates a “U” shape valley)

Weathering: the breakdown of rock into small parts

  1. Chemical Weathering: rocks broken into pieces by chemical bonds being distroyed

  2. Mechanical Weathering: rocks physically broken into smaller pieces by front wedging, thermal expansion, and biological weathering

Erosion: the wearing away of the Earth’s surface followed by the movement of rock material to another location

Oak ridges Moraine: contains one of the last large uninterrupted forested spans

Divergent: tectonic plates moving away from each other

Convergent: tectonic plates moving towards each other

Transform: Tectonic plates scraping each other(faulting)