Week One
Week One Critical and Creative Thinking Questions
Chapter 1
1. How do you think the principle of uniformitarianism accounts for occasional catastrophic events such as meteorite impacts, huge volcanic eruptions, or great earthquakes?
Uniformitarianism and catastrophic events go hand and hand, uniformitarianism is the earth continuing to change due to natural processes, those natural processes would be catastrophic events. Technology is rapidly progressing, the detection of catastrophic events can be discovered before it even begins to happen, and eventually these events will be a part of the geological process.
2. In what ways do geologic processes affect your daily life?
Geological processes such as Weathering, erosion, volcanic eruption, and plate tectonics affect my life on a daily basis, I don’t think individuals actually realize how dependent we really on certain materials. Appreciating and understanding how important the Earth’s natural resources are is significant for our population to eventually reach sustainability.
Chapter 2
3. When a volcano erupts, spewing forth a column of hot volcanic ash, the ash particles are tiny fragments of solidified magma that slowly fall to Earth’s surface, forming a layer of sediment. Would a rock formed from cemented particles of volcanic ash be igneous or sedimentary? Can you think of other circumstances that might form rocks that are intermediate between two of the major rock families?
The rock would be igneous, igneous rocks are formed from the solidification of molten rocks. Rocks can be formed in numerous ways a few examples are erosion and earth quakes. I think that metamorphic rocks are the perfect example for combining all the three different rocks together because, metamorphic rocks were originally igneous or sedimentary rocks that simply changed over time.
4. Identify which of the following materials are minerals and why: water, beach sand, diamond, wood, vitamin pill, gold nugget, fishbone, and emerald.
Chapter 1
1. How do you think the principle of uniformitarianism accounts for occasional catastrophic events such as meteorite impacts, huge volcanic eruptions, or great earthquakes?
Uniformitarianism and catastrophic events go hand and hand, uniformitarianism is the earth continuing to change due to natural processes, those natural processes would be catastrophic events. Technology is rapidly progressing, the detection of catastrophic events can be discovered before it even begins to happen, and eventually these events will be a part of the geological process.
2. In what ways do geologic processes affect your daily life?
Geological processes such as Weathering, erosion, volcanic eruption, and plate tectonics affect my life on a daily basis, I don’t think individuals actually realize how dependent we really on certain materials. Appreciating and understanding how important the Earth’s natural resources are is significant for our population to eventually reach sustainability.
Chapter 2
3. When a volcano erupts, spewing forth a column of hot volcanic ash, the ash particles are tiny fragments of solidified magma that slowly fall to Earth’s surface, forming a layer of sediment. Would a rock formed from cemented particles of volcanic ash be igneous or sedimentary? Can you think of other circumstances that might form rocks that are intermediate between two of the major rock families?
The rock would be igneous, igneous rocks are formed from the solidification of molten rocks. Rocks can be formed in numerous ways a few examples are erosion and earth quakes. I think that metamorphic rocks are the perfect example for combining all the three different rocks together because, metamorphic rocks were originally igneous or sedimentary rocks that simply changed over time.
4. Identify which of the following materials are minerals and why: water, beach sand, diamond, wood, vitamin pill, gold nugget, fishbone, and emerald.
References: The Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction. (2003, January 1). Retrieved March 23, 2015, from http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL107/KT.html Igneous Rocks. (2005, April 1). Retrieved March 24, 2015, from http://geology.com/rocks/igneous-rocks.shtml Texas Almanac - The Source For All Things Texan Since 1857. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2015, from https://texasalmanac.com/index.php?q=topics/environment/geology-texas-0