EarthsCrust.ppt

How do Earth processes affect our everyday lives? Natural events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, floods and gigantic sea waves make headlines and affect many people in obvious ways. Affects Although we cannot prevent most of these natural disasters from happening, the more knowledge we have about what causes them, the better we will be able to predict, and possibly control the severity of impact. Geologists Scottish geologist James Hutton, the eighteenth-century geologist developed the theory of uniformitarianism. English geologist Sir Charles Lyell is given the most credit for advancing the basic principles of modern geology. The Rock Cycle Some people believe that once a rock, always that rock.? But that is not always true.? Rocks take different forms at different times.? A long time ago our earth was very volcanic.? As these volcanoes cooled and vast oceans swept over the earth, the cooled lava was broken or crushed into small pieces.? These small pieces were cemented together to become sedimentary rocks.? Rock Cycle contd. These rocks were buried and the heat and pressure changed them into metamorphic rocks.? They might even have melted and become igneous rocks once more.? As you can tell, a rock may change many times and the rock you hold today may look entirely different to someone a long time from now. The Rock Cycle Convection The mobile rock beneath the rigid plates is believed to be moving in a circular manner somewhat like a pot of thick soup when heated to boiling. The heated soup rises to the surface, spreads and begins to cool, and then sinks back to the bottom of the pot where it is reheated and rises again. This cycle is repeated over and over to generate what scientists call a convection cell or convective flow. Convection contd. While convective flow can be observed easily in a pot of boiling soup, the idea of such a process stirring up the Earths interior is much more difficult to grasp. While we know tha