Ch.

1
• Geology:
- identifies the branch of Earth science that studies all aspects of the planet: its history, composition and
internal structure, and its surface features
- To explain the physical universe
- Study of extreme events as well as gradual change
- A planetary science that uses remote sensing devices to scan the entire globe
à Map the continents, chart the motions of the atmosphere and oceans, monitor how our environment
is changing
- Meteorology: study of the atmosphere
- Ecology: Concerns the abundance and distribution of life
- Geologic record: information preserved in the rocks that have been formed at various times
throughout Earth’s history.
• Principle of Uniformitarianism:
- The processes we see in action on Earth today have worked in much the same way throughout the
geologic past.
- A scientific hypothesis in the 18th century by James Hutton.
- Charles Lyell: The present if the key to the past
• Scientific method:
- general procedure for discovering how the universe works through systematic observations and
experiments
- Scientific research: make new discoveries and to confirm old ones
- Hypothesis: tentative explanation based on data collected through observations and experiments;
Must be testable
- Theory: A set of hypotheses that explains some aspect of nature, usually obey physical laws
- Scientific Model: A precise representation of how a natural process operates of how a natural system
behaves
• Earth
- Spherical but not perfect sphere
- Formed 4.56 billion years ago
- Topography: measured w.r.t sea level
à Continents: have typical elevation of 0 to 1 km above sea level
à Ocean basins: typical depths of 4 to 5 km below sea level
- Elevation of Earth’s Surface: 20km from Mount Everest in Himalaya (highest point, 8850m above sea
level) to Challenger Deep (lowest point, 11030m below sea level)
- Radius: 6370km
• Meteorites (what core is made of)
- Pieces of solar system that have fallen to earth
- Made of Iron and Nickel (8g/cubic cm)
- Surrounded by mantle (silicate-rich rock)
• Seismic Wave (wave caused by earthquake)
- Compressional wave: expand and compress the material the move through as they travel through
solid, liquid, or gas
- Shear wave: move the material from side to side; Propagate only through solids
• Convicting System: like hot boiling water
« Layer of Earth (outer to inner)
1. Curst: (0-40 km) ; 0.4% of Earth’s mass
2. Mantle: (40-2890 km) ; 67.1% of Earth’s mass
3. Liquid Iron outer core: (2890-5150 km) ; 30.8% of Earth’s Mass
4. Solid Iron outer core: (5150-6370km) ; 1.7% of Earth’s Mass
- Density: 5.5g/cubic cm
- 8 main elements: Fe, Ni, O2, S, Al, Mg, Ca, Si
à 90%: Fe, O2, Si, Mg
• Crust
- Composed of low-density silicates, which are rich in aluminium and potassium from the higher-
density silicates of the mantle, which contain more magnesium and iron.
- Mohorovici discontinuity: the boundary at the relatively shallow depth of 40km beneath the European
continent.
- Averaged thickness of oceanic crust: 7km
- Averaged thickness of continental crust: 40km àrise higher than oceanic crust
- Oceanic crust: contains more iron à denser than continental rocks
• Mantle
- Layered into upper mantle and lower mantle
- Made of O2, Mg, Si, Al, Fe, Ca,
- Separated by a transition zone, where rock density increases in a series of steps
à Changes in the compactness of its constituent minerals due to the increasing pressure with depth
à located at 410km and 660 km
• The Inner Core
- Core-Mantle boundary reflects seismic waves
- Made with pure Iron-Nickel Alloy
- Solid metallic sphere suspended within the liquid outer core
- Radius: 1220km (2/3 size of the moon)
- 3500 degC at boundary; 5000 degC at centre
• The Outer Core
- Made of Iron-Nickel Alloy, Oxygen, Sulphur

• Earth has two heat engines: Internal, external

- Power earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciation
Ø Internal: powered by the heat energy trapped in its deep interior during its violent origin and released
inside the planet by radioactivity
- Drives movement in the mantle and core
- Supply energy that melts rock, moves continents, lifts up mountains
Ø External: Driven by solar energy: heat supplied to Earth’s surface by the Sun
- Energizes the atmosphere and oceans, responsible for Earth’s climate and weather

• Solar system: formed 4.56 billion years ago through rapid condensation of dust cloud
- ~3.56 billion years ago: Moon formed; Earth’s core separated from its mantle
- Formation of large continental masses: 2.5 bya
- ~3.8 bya rocks show evidence of erosion of water à existence of hydrosphere
- ~2.7 bya, build-up of oxygen in the atmosphere
• Earth System
Ø The Climate System: determine climate on a global scale and how climate changes with time
- Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, Lithosphere
- Anthropogenic: Human generated emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases
Ø The Plate Tectonic System
- Lithosphere, Asthenosphere, Deep Mantle
àLithosphere: moves at rates of a few cm per year
Ø The Geodynamic System: involves interactions that produce a magnetic field deep inside Earth in its
liquid outer core.
- Shield biosphere from harmful radiation
• Magnetic reversals: The direction of the magnetic force is reversed, the compass needle points to
the south.
 Ch. 9
• Big Bang theory: universe began about 13.7 billion years ago with cosmic explosion; occur 540 million
years ago
• Solar System: sun and other planets that orbit it
• Nebular hypothesis (by Immanuel Kant)
- The origin of the solar system could be traced to a rotating cloud of gases and fine dust
Ø Nebulae: mostly hydrogen and helium
- Diffusing, slowing rotating nebula contracted under the force of gravity
- The contraction accelerated the rotation of the particles and flattened the cloud into a disk
• Sun
- Matter began to drift toward the centre of the nebula under the pull of gravity, accumulation into a
protostar and form the sun.
- The material in the proto-Sun became dense and hot by compressing its own weightàinternal
temperature riseà nuclear fusion begin
• Planets
- Solar nebula: a disk of gases and dust
- The temperature of the solar nebula rise as it flatten into a disk à more matter accumulated in the inner
region à less dense outer regions.
- Gravitational attraction caused the dust and condensing material to clump together into small,
kilometre-sized chunks, planetesimals
- Happen within 10 million years after the condensation of the nebula
Ø Terrestrial Plants: Earthlike Planets; Inner Planets
- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars
- Accrete about 4.56 billion years ago
- Form near the sun à volatile materials boiled away
- Solar wind blew away most of the H2, He, H2O, other light gases and liquids à Inner planet were
formed mainly from the dense matter that was left behind (silicates, Fe, Ni)
Ø Giant Outer Planet
- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
- Formed by the volatile materials from terrestrial plants
- Big à strong gravitational attraction à hold onto lighter nebular materials
- Composed mostly of H2, He, other light materials of original nebula
Ø Asteroid belt
- Planetesimals collected between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter
- Diameter: 10km to 100km
- Largest: Ceres, (930km)
- Meteorites: Chunks of material from outer space that strike Earth
Ø Comets
- Dust and ice that condensed in the cooler outer reaches of solar nebula
- Diameter: larger than 10km
- Form halos around the solar system
Earth Formation:
• Gravitational differentiation: transformation of random chunks of primordial matter into a body whose
interior is divided into concentric layers
• Magma ocean: a body with an outer molten layer 100km thick of Earth
• Tremendous impact energy absorbed during Earth’s formation à Heated interioràcomponents moves
around
Ø Core: Sank heavy material à releasing gravitational energy à more melting
- Made of Iron, 1/3 of the primitive planet’s material AND Nickel
- Inner Core = solid à High pressures cause iron too hard to melt
 Ø Crust: the lighter material that floated to the surface à brought heat from the interior to the surface
- Thickness: 7km on the seafloor to 40km on the continents
- Oceanic crust: constantly generated by seafloor spreading, recycled into mantle by subduction
- Continental crust: accumulated from silicates of relatively low density with a felsic composition and
low temperatures.
- Difference in density à Drive Oceanic Curst into subduction zones, Resist Continental crust
Ø Mantle: made up of the material left in the middle zone after most the denser material sank ad less
dense material rise toward surface
- Between core and crust
- About 2850km thick
- Consist of ultramafic silicate rocks, containing more Mg and Fe than crustal silicate
• Volcanoes: consist H2, CO2, N2, water vapour
- H2 escaped to space;
- CO2, N2 enveloped the planet à Atmosphere
- Water Vapourà Ocean
- O2 formed when living organisms presented

• Diversity of Planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Moon

Ø Mercury
- Thin atmosphere consisting mostly He
- Lower atmospheric pressure than Earth
- No surface wind or water
- Close to Sun à 470degC surface temperature during day; -170degC at night
- High interior pressure à large density
- Fe-Ni Core à made up 70% of its mass
- No silicate mantle
Ø Venus
- Wrapped in a heavy, poisonous, incredibly hot (475degC) atmosphere composed mostly of CO2,
corrosive sulfuric acid droplets
- At least 85% of surface is lava flow
- Closest size to Earth
- Techtonically active
Ø Mars
- Smaller than Earth; 1/10 of Earth’s mass
- ½ Radius of Earth
- Thin atmosphere composed of CO2
- No liquid water, cold planet à water existed as ice
- Surface is older than 3 billion years
- Look like sedimentary rocks
Ø Moon
- Has no atmosphere
- bone try, having lost most of its water generated by the giant impact.
- Water ice may be presented deep within sunless craters
- Lighter than Earth
Ø Giant Outer Planet
- Have rocky, silica-rich and iron-rich cores surrounded by thick shells of liquid hydrogen and helium
- Jupiter, Saturn has high pressuresà hydrogen may turn into metal.
Ø Dwarf Planet: tiny size, unusual orbit, rock-ice-gas composition
 Ch.2
• Tectonics: describe mountain building, volcanism, earthquakes, and other processes that construct
geologic features on Earth’s surface
• Continental Drift: Large-scale movements of continents
- Late 16th-17th century: jigsaw-puzzle fit of the coasts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean à Americas,
Europe, Africa had once been a single continent
- 19th century: Eduard Suess: Southern continents had once formed a single continent à Gondwana
- 1915: Alfred Wegener: Pangaea (supercontinent); Continental Drift on opposite side of Altanic
à300 million-year-old fossil of Mesosaurus have been found in Africa and South America à suggests
these two once joined together
• Seafloor Spreading: Convention in Earth’s mantle could push and pull continents apart, creating new
oceanic crust
- 1928: Arthur Holmes: convection currents dragged two halves of the original continent apart à
ascending current à ocean floor development; descending current à mountain building
- World War II: Maurice Ewing: seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean is made of young basalt, not old granite
- Mid-Atlantic Ridge: mapping of an undersea mountain chain à discovery of a deep cracklike rift valley
- 1960s: Harry Hess, Robert Dietz: Earth’s crust separates along the rifts in mid-ocean ridge; New crust is
formed by the upwelling of hot molten rock into these cracks
àNewly created lithosphere (new seafloor): spreads laterally away from the rift and replaced by newer
crust through Plate Creation
- Pacific Ring of Fire: Oceanic lithosphere is being recycled by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes
• Theory of Plate Tectonics (1968)
- Lithosphere is not a continuous shell but is broken into a mosaic of rigid plates that move over Earth’s
surface
- Largest plate: Pacific Plate à comprises much of the Pacific Ocean basin
- North American Plate: extends from Pacific coast of North America to middle of the Atlantic Ocean
- 13 major plates, so small one. E.g. Juan de Fuca Plate: small pieces of oceanic lithosphere trapped
between the giant Pacific and North American plates.
• Plate Boundaries
1. Divergent boundaries: Plates move apart and new lithosphere is created (Plate area increases)
- Within oceanic basins: narrow rifts
- Within continents: more complicated and distributed over a wider area
Ø Oceanic Spreading Centres
- Mid-ocean ridge: the boundary between separating plates; An undersea mountain chain that
exhibits earthquakes, volcanism, rifting.
- As seafloor spreads, hot molten rock (magma) wells up into rifts to form new oceanic crust.
Ø Continental Rifting
- Divergent boundaries are characterized by rift valleys, volcanism, earthquakes distributed over a
wider zone that is found at oceanic spreading centres
- Continents have separated enough for new oceanic curst to form along the spreading axis.
2. Convergent boundaries: Plates come together and one plate is recycled into the mantle (Plate area
decreases)
Ø Ocean-Ocean Convergence
- Subduction: one plate descends beneath the other
- The lithosphere of the subducting plate sinks into the asthenosphere and is recycled by the
mantle convection system à long, narrow deep-sea trench
- Island arc: water trapped in the rocked squeezed out and rises into the asthenosphere above the
slab à mantle materials above it melts à form chain of volcanoes produced by magma
 Ø Ocean-Continent Convergence
- Continental lithosphere overrides the oceanic lithosphere since it’s less dense
- Submerged margin of the continent is crumpled by the convergence, deforming the continental
crust and uplifting rocks into a mountain belt parallel to the deep-sea trench à produce great
earthquakes
- Nevado del Ruiz, Cascadia subduction zone, the Andes
Ø Continent-Continent Convergence
- Continent-continent collision creates a double thickness of crust à forming the highest
mountain range & earthquakes
- Indian and Eurasian plates à form Himalaya
- Appalachian Mountains uplifted when North America, Eurasia, Africa collided to form
supercontinent Pangaea 300 million years ago
3. Transform faults: Plate slide horizontally past each other (Plate area doesn’t change)
- Lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed
- San Andreas fault: Pacific Plate slides past the North America Plate
- Typically found along mid-ocean ridges where the continuity of a spreading zone is broken and the
boundary is offset in a step-like pattern
- Can connect divergent plate boundaries with convergent plate boundaries

Method to measure plate movements

1. Magnetic anomalies: the intensity of the magnetic field alternated between high and low values in long,
narrow parallel bands à confirm the seafloor spreading hypothesis
Ø Rock record of magnetic reversal:
- Thermoremanent magnetization: iron-rich lavas cool, becoming slightly but permanently magnetized in
the direction of Earth’s magnetic field
- Magnetic time scale
Ø Magnetic anomaly patterns on the seafloor: the band of high and low magnetic intensity on the
seafloor corresponded to bands of rock that were magnetized during ancient episodes of normal and
reversed magnetism
- Positive magnetic anomaly: locally stronger field, rocks magnetized in the normal direction
- Negative magnetic anomaly: rocks magnetized in the reversed direction; locally weaker field
2. Deep-Sea Drilling: colleting cores containing sections of seafloor rock
- Dust from the atmosphere, organic material from marine plants and animals accumulate as seafloor
sediments on new oceanic crust.
- Provides evidence for seafloor spreading
- Ages of the oldest sediments à TOP OF CRUST
- Ages can be calculated from fossil skeletons of tiny single-celled planktonic organisms
3. Geodesy: measure plate movements
Ø Astronomical positioning: measuring the positions of points on Earth’s surface in relation to the fixed
starts in the night sky
Ø Global positioning system (GPS): constellation of 24 Earth-orbiting satellites
The Grand Reconstruction
Supercontinent Pangaea existed 250 million years ago
• Seafloor isochrons: tell us the time that has elapsed since the rocks were injected as magma into a
spreading zone; shows ages of tocks on the seafloor
àparallel to and symmetric about the ridge axis along which they’re created
àrevel the positions of divergent boundaries in earlier times
• Transform-fault boundaries: indicate the directions of relative plate movement
• Breakup of Pangaea
- Pangaea existed about 240 million years ago
- 200 mya: North America rifted away from Europe
- Opening of North Atlantic accompanied by the separation of the northern continents from Gondwana
- Breakup of Gondwana à South America, Africa, India, Antarctica

Mantle Convection: why plates move

-Hot mantle flow like sticky fluid; Hear from Earth’s deep interior causes this material to undergo convection
at speeds of a few 10 of mm per year
-Rising of hot matter in once place and sinking of cold matter in another place à drive forces of plate
tectonics
 Ch.3
What are minerals?
- Limestone: made of calcite (single mineral)
- Granite: made of several minerals
Ø Minerals: naturally occurring, solid crystalline substance, inorganic, with a specific chemical composition
- Cannot be divided mechanically into smaller components
- Naturally occurring: substance must be found in nature
- Solid crystalline substance: solid substances, neither liquid nor gases; tiny particles of matter or atoms,
arranged in an orderly, repeating, 3D array.
- Inorganic: secreted by organisms
- With a specific chemical composition: fixed or varies within defined limits; fixed ratio of atoms

Formation of minerals
～Assemblages of sub-microscopic atoms organised in an ordered 3D array
～Crystals that we can see in naked eyes
• Crystallization: the atoms of gas or liquid come together in the proper chemical proportions and in the
proper arrangement to form a solid substance. (e.g Diamond)
- Lowering the temperature of a liquid below its freezing point start crystallization
- As magma falls below its mp (1000degC), crystal of silicate such as olivine or feldspar begin to form.
- High pressureà forces atom into a closely packed structure
• Cation substitution: common in minerals contain silicate ion (SiO4 4-), such as olivine
• Single-chain structure: formed by the sharing of oxygen ions. Minerals of the pyroxene group are single-
chain silicate minerals
• Double-chain structure: combine two chains to for double chains. Adj. double chains linked by cation form
the structure of minerals in the amphibole group. Hornblendeàigneous and metamorphic
• Sheet structures: each tetrahedron shares three of its oxygen ions with adj. tetrahedra to build stacked
sheets of tetrahedra, Muscovite, Kaolinite à Commonly found in sediments
• Frameworks: each tetrahedron shares all its oxygen ions with other tetrahedra. Feldspars

Physical Prop.
• Cleavage: tendency of a crystal to split along planar surface
àStrong bond: poor cleavage
àCovalent bonds: poor cleavage; Ionic bonds: good cleavage
• Fracture: tendency of a crystal to break along irregular surface
• Luster: the way the surface of a mineral reflects light

• Streak: colour of the fine deposit of mineral powder left on abrasive surface
 What are rocks?
Rocks: Naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals

• Igneous Rocks: crystallization from magma

àwhen magma erupts from a volcano onto Earth’s surface as lava, it cools and solidifies so rapidly that
crystals have no time to grow à fine-grained
1. Intrusive: crystallize when magma intrudes into unmelted rock masses deep in Earth crust à slowly
coolàlarge crystal (granite)
2. Extrusive: formed when magmas erupt at Earth’s surface as lava and cool rapidly (Basalt) à glassy or
fine grained
• Sedimentary Rocks: found at Earth’s surface as layers of loose particles that are originated by weathering
and erosion
1. Weathering: all the chemical and physical processes that break up and decay rocks into fragments and
dissolved substances of various size
2. Erosion: transport particles from weathering, loosen soil and rock and move them downhill or
downstream to the spot where they’re deposited as layers of sediment (Siliciclastic sediments;
chemical sediments)
3. Lithification: converts sediments into solid rock
è Compaction: particles are squeezed together by the weight of overlying sediments into a mass
denser than the original
è Cementation: minerals ppt. around deposited particles and bind them together
4. Bedding: formation of parallel layers of sediment as particles are deposited
• Metamorphic Rocks: produced when high temperatures and pressures deep within Earth cause changes in
the mineralogy
1. Regional metamorphism: where high pressures and temperatures extend over large regions when
plates collides
2. Contact metamorphism: high temperatures are restricted to smaller areas in the rocks near and in
contact with a magmatic intrusion

Rock Cycles