**So you're taking a Midterm Exam...maybe this will help you out**
Unit Preassessment Questions
What is the Geosphere?
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The geosphere is the solid Earth that includes continental and oceanic crust as well as the various layers of the Earth's interior.
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The geosphere includes the lithosphere, the mantle, and the dense metallic cores.
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The surface of Earth has identifiable major features--land masses (continents), oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, canyons, and glaciers.
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The movement of Earth's lithospheric plates causes both slow changes in the earth's surface (e.g., formation of mountains and ocean basins) and rapid ones (e.g., volcanic eruptions and earthquakes).
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Earth's surface is built up and worn down by natural processes, such as rock formation, erosion, and weathering.
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Physical evidence, such as fossils and radiometric dating, provide evidence for the Earth system's evolution and development.
Enduring Understandings:
- The present is the key to the past. Studying current Earth processes helps scientists piece together the planet's geologic history.
- The Earth can be viewed as a set of dynamic systems—the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere—that interact with each other. The interactions of these systems through time have determined the character of the Earth.
- Geologic time: The processes that have governed the evolution of the Earth operate over time scales so much longer than human experience that they are difficult to comprehend.
- Nearly everything we know about the Earth—including the age of the planet and when life first appeared—has been learned from evidence contained in rocks.
- The flow of solid rock in the Earth's mantle (convection) drives plate tectonics and has shaped the planet's surface over millions of years.
Unit Introduction:
Section 3: Rocks, Minerals, and Erosion
Tools:
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