Term 2-Assessment 1 Revision
Earth’s 3 layers:
1. Earth is almost like a sphere.
2. Its radius is about 6,400 km.
3. It's about 12 times the distance from London to Edinburg.
It’s not all solid, it’s made of 3 layers:
1. The crust: you live on the crust. It is Earth’s hard skin of rock. At the UK, it's
up to 35km thick.
2.The mantle: It’s about 2,900 km thick and made of solid rock.
The upper mantle is hard and rigid. The rock at the lower mantle is not rigid. It
can creep or flow very, very slowly.
3. The Core: made of metal. Mainly Iron mixed with Nickel. The inner core is
solid. The outer core is liquid.
How did the layers form?
1. Sometime after the Earth formed, it got so hot everything inside melted.
2. The heavier substances in the liquid sank, and the lighter ones rose,
making layers.
3. As the Earth cooled, layers remained.
Still hot
1. It is still very hot inside Earth.
2. It gets hotter as you go down through it.
3. The temperature at the center is estimated to be around 6000 oC,
that’s more than enough to melt Iron and Nickel, but the high pressure
stops them from melting.
Oceanic and Continental Crust:
• Oceanic crust: The crust under the ocean.
• Continental crust: The crust that forms the land.
• The rock in the oceanic crust is heavier.
The outer part of the Earth is cracked into huge slabs. Their
movements cause volcanoes and Earthquakes.
First, A puzzling pattern:
1. An earthquake is caused by rock suddenly shifting.
2. A volcano forms when liquid rocks burst out through the Earth’s hard
surface.
• The earthquake and volcano sites:
1. Tend to lie along lines.
2. Are often together.
3. Occur in the ocean as well as the land.
Why do they move?
1.Plates are slabs of the lithosphere- Earth's hard crust and upper
mantle. They float on the soft, hot rock below.
2.They move because they’re dragged by the Earth’s powerful hot
currents-convection currents-in the soft ,hot rock.
3.They move just a cm every year but it all adds up. Example: India
moved 2000km North in the past 70mil years.
Did you know??: London moves 2cm further away from New
York every year because of plate movements.
What is an earthquake?
1. Powerful forces pushing two huge masses of rock into each
other.
2. The rock stores up the pressure as strain energy.
3. Suddenly, the pressure becomes too much and one mass rock
gives away, slipping upwards.
4. The stored energy is released in waves called seismic waves.
5. The waves push through the Earth, in all directions, shaking
everything.
6. The shaking is called an earthquake.
Earthquakes:
1. The focus of the earthquake is the point where the waves
started.
2. The epicenter is the point directly above it on Earth’s surface.
3. As the rock settles into its new position, there will be lots of
smaller earthquakes called aftershocks.
How are Earthquakes measured?
1. Earthquakes are measured using machines called
seismometers. They record the shaking as waves on a
graph.
2. From the graph, scientists can tell how much energy an
earthquakes gives out- called its magnitude.
3. We show it on a Richter scale.
4. An increase 1, means the shaking is 10 times greater, and
about 30 times more energy is given out.
What’s a volcano?
A volcano is where liquid rock or magma shoots out or erupts
through the ground. Above the ground, the liquid rock is called
lava.
What damage can eruptions do?
1. A pyroclastic flow travels up to 200 km/h. You can’t escape. It
scorches and smothers everything.
2. Mudflows can travel up to 100 km/h. They sweep everything
along. You drown in mud.
3. Lava flows destroy crops and bury towns and villages.
4. A blanket of ash will ruin crops.
5. The dust can also cause planes to crash.
6. Volcanic gas causes acid rain. The kills trees and plants over a
wide area.
7. A thick layer of ash can be heavy enough to make roofs
collapse.
Tsunamis: When there is a big Earthquake in the ocean floor. It will set off
waves that travel in all directions. These waves are called a tsunami.
Out in the ocean, the waves may be only a meter high, but they can travel at
700km/h.
When they hit the land, they reach 30m high.
Tsunamis can be deadly. Tsunamis can kill people thousands of miles away
from the epicenter.
26th December 2024:
There was an earthquake in the Indian Ocean floor.
A huge one: a 9.2 on the Richter scale.
It caused a tsunami that left 300,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands
homeless, across fifteen countries.
Warning signs for a tsunami:
1. Earthquake.
2. Water recedes from the coast.
3. It sounds like a roar.
A warning system:
• There is now a Tsunami warning system for the countries around the Indian
ocean.
• When an earthquake in the ocean is detected, people are warned through the
sirens and loudspeakers.
