Intro to ESCI

Question 1

What is geology?

Answer 1

Earth Structure, composition and processes set into a historical context

Question 2

What is the anthropocene known for?

Answer 2

Nuclear weapon testing. The first time humans imprinted a global signal on the earth

Question 3

What is the Gaia hypothesis?

Answer 3

Earth is best seen as a homeostatic, self-organising, self-regulating system

Question 4

What is a flux?

Answer 4

A flow of energy or material between spheres of life

Question 5

What is forcing

Answer 5

Long term persistent influence on a system

Question 6

What is a system?

Answer 6

An entity made up of different parts which function as a whole.

Question 7

What is the nebular theory?

Answer 7

Bodies of our solar system evolved from an enormous rotating cloud called the solar nebula

Question 8

What is Uniformitarianism?

Answer 8

Processes that have been/are at play have been for a very long time

Question 9

What is the principle of fossil succession?

Answer 9

Fossil organisms succeed one another in a definite and determinable order.

Question 10

What rocks can be used for radiometric dating?

Answer 10

Igneous and metamorphic rocks

Question 11

What is a fossil?

Answer 11

Part of any animal preserved in rock

Question 12

What did Mary Anning teach us about fossils?

Answer 12

That they are markers in time

Question 13

Why is magma important in the earth?

Answer 13

It creates a magnetic field which protects earth from cosmic rays

Question 14

When did the supercontinent Rodina form?

Answer 14

around 1.1 billion years ago

Question 15

What eon did organisms appear?

Answer 15

Phanerozoic

Question 16

What happened in the menzoic era?

Answer 16

Volcanism, sedimentation increased. Mammals and Dinosaurs co existed

Question 17

What eon is deemed the age of the mammals?

Answer 17

Cenozoic eon

Question 18

How long ago did multicellular organisms form?

Answer 18

1.5 billion years ago

Question 19

What are rocks?

Answer 19

They are aggregates of one or more minerals

Question 20

What forms Silicate rocks?

Answer 20

Silicon and Oxygen

Question 21

What type of rock is an extrusive, igneous rock?

Answer 21

Felsic

Question 22

What type of rock is an intrusive, igneous rock?

Answer 22

Mafic

Question 23

What are the three types of sedimentary

Answer 23

Detrital, chemical and clastic (Detrital rock which has been broken down and moved)

Question 24

What texture involves individual, interlocking crystals?

Answer 24

Crystalline Grandular

Question 25

What texture involves large crystals in a fine-grained matric?

Answer 25

Porphyritic

Question 26

Whats a phenocryst?

Answer 26

large crystals in rocks

Question 27

What is stratigraphy?

Answer 27

The study of layers and their distribution in space and time

Question 28

What are Steno’s 3 principles?

Answer 28

The principle of superposition (Any layer is older than the one above it)
The principle of horizontality (Particles originally form horizontal to the earth)
The principle of original lateral continuity (Layers originally form continuous unless they hit a solid)

Question 29

What are the two types of metamorphic rocks?

Answer 29

Regional and Contact

Question 30

What is foliation?

Answer 30

Layers of different minerals in rock form

Question 31

What are minerals?

Answer 31

A naturally occurring solid substance

Question 32

What is cleavage?

Answer 32

The tendency for a rock to break

Question 33

Why does a magma body always rise to the surface?

Answer 33

Because the surface is less dense than the materials surrounding it.

Question 34

What are the three processes which have created the three types of rocks that we have in the world today?

Answer 34

Igneous rock = crystallization
Metamorphic rock = metamorphism
Sedimentary rock = litification