HOMEWORK 1 – Due Tues. Jan 29, 5:30 p.m.
Answer the following questions or define the following terms.
1. What is geology and what are the two types of geology?
Geology: is the act of studying earth or other solid celestial bodies and how they were formed and what they are comprised of. There are two main types of geology:
Physical: the study of minerals and how they were formed.
Historical: the study of the story of solid celestial bodies and the evolution of the natural elements/features that comprise them.
2. Explain how a hypothesis is different from a theory.
All theories were once hypothesis but not all hypotheses are theories. A hypothesis is a conclusion based on assumptions where a theory is a hypothesis that is well tested and supported by data.
3. What are the three major layers of the earth?
I would suppose the three major layers if you simplified classification of the many layers of the earth to be: the crust, mantle, and core.
However, for this geology course we seem to really be focused mostly on what is going on in the lithosphere, which consists of: the oceanic crust, continental crust, and upper mantle.
4. List the three major types of rock and the two major processes that form each type of rock.
Sedimentary: weather and erosion.
Metamorphic: pressure and temperature.
Igneous: melting and cooling.
5. List the five characteristics a substance must exhibit in order to be identified as a mineral (the five part definition of a mineral).
Naturally occurring, solid, crystalline, inorganic substance, that has a specific chemical composition.
6. What is a compound?
New substance that results from the bonding of two or more elements.
7. What is the difference between covalent and ionic bonds?
Ionic Bonds are the bonding of two electrically charged atoms when one atom has transferred an electron to the other causing the two ions to become positively and negatively charged.
Covalent