ACE All about Rocks

This blog post is for 25/2/2011 ACE Geography lesson.

My notes are full of scribbles! Anyways, we started with the crust today. We learnt something new, and that is the land part of the crust is the continental crust, while the water part is the oceanic crust. Interestingly, they are both solid. Just then a lot of questions popped into my head. I thought the water was… well, water. Why solid? Well, the solid part would be the crust itself. The water was, well, on top of the crust, like:




I know it’s not really nice, because I drew it free hand on the computer, but I hope it helps.

Okay, just as I promised, here is the answer to “What happens if the plates hit each other?” Volcanoes and mountains form. Can you imagine that? They hit, and then they form these cool big landforms. However, that is not all. Earthquakes can occur too. Strong earthquakes, just like the one that happened in New Zealand.

That brings me to how the plates move. As the mantle moves (conventional current), the plates move in three directions, as they are floating on the Mantle, the example Ms J gave us, just like the yummy-looking, lip-smaking, stomach-worth-growling-for treat, S’more (sorry, I’m hungry!):

The cracker: Plate on Earth's crust

The melted marshmellow: Mantle

These are the three kinds of plate movement: (Once again, the diagrams are not exactly pleasant to the eyes… )
Diverge (pull away) :

Converge (move towards each other):

And lastly,
Side-by-side:

Cool right? One more thing: the plate movement leads to plate boundaries.

Then we went on to Igneous rocks. They are made of magma.
1. Granite:
It is course-grained as the magma, which takes a long time to cool, has time to ‘grow’ bigger. Why does the magma take a long time to cool? The magma cools inside the Earth and the inside of the Earth is hot.

2. Basalt:

Yes, we all know it is, obviously, fine-grained. Why? For this case, the magma hardens quickly outside the Earth, because outside the Earth is cooler than inside the Earth.

Now we move on to to Sedimentary rocks. Rocks are broken down to smaller pieces through weathering and erosion. Small pieces of sediments get carried into rivers by water and wind. They are then piled up and, under tremendous pressure, are camented together and hardened. The result? Beautiful breathtaking Sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks are my favourite kind. So, here are some pictures that I think are so cool.

Then we skipped a few parts and went all the way to Metemorphic rocks. How are they formed? When the plates move, one plate can slide underneath another plate. Metemorphic rocks are formed inside of the Earth.And that was the end of the lesson.

This time, the lesson was overflowing with lots of different types of question, so many that Ms J had to stop all the overflowing questions to move on with the lesson. I have certainly learnt a lot of interesting things today, and I hope to be able to be as smart as Ms J one day!

ACE

Today's lesson started with a recap on the key points that we have studied on rocks. Then, Ms J told us about fieldwork, when you go out to find evidence. Ms J told us about what we will be doing when we upgrade to upper secondary (regarding fieldwork). She reminded us that Geography is not just about what the teacher says in class, it is, most importantly, about skills, interest and all. How true!

Then Ms J started lesson proper. We learnt one new topic about Geography, and that is the Layers of the Earth. A little summary:

Crust- Solid outermost layer, separate pieces called plate

floats on

Mantle- Liquid/ Molten

Core- Solid centre

How to remember? Just remember the Ferrero Rocher : ( picture from Wikipedia)
The small circle in the chocolate: Inner Core
The circle surrounding the small one: Outer Core
The thick darker brown big circle: Mantle
The outer layer: Crust




Cool, right?

The mantle is >200 degrees C (that's super hot!) and the core is 5000 degrees C (that's super super super hot!). The core is interestingly the hottest thing on Earth! Can't imagine how hot it is? Maybe knowing that the Sun is 5000 degrees C might help you!

Here is a website regarding the temperature of the middle of the Earth: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/PhillipChan.shtml

Then one of us asked Ms J how do scientists find out about the three layers. It was then Ms J gave us our first assignment, to find out for ourselves . We have researched, and here is the answer, taken from http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080413155742AAz6Egs :
"I'm guessing your talking about the inner core, outer core, etc...Earthquakes produce two different waved pressure waves (P waves) and shake waves (S waves), these waves are picked up all over the world after an earth quake.When an earthquake happens there would be shadow zones where no waves where picked up or only P waves where picked up... the face that S-waves where completely blocked by the core meant that there needs to be liquid... the fact that there is P wave shadow zones proved that the core is not completely liquid and there is a inner core which is solid.The shape of these shadow zones tell us the size of the inner and outer cores and in part their densities."

Understand? :)

And then the next big question came out, Why is the solid centre (Core) solid? To research was our next assignment, and to prove that we have done our homework, here is the short but direct results of "Why is the earths inner core solid?" from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070620064611AAsJULg:
"The incredible pressure does it despite the great heat down there. ~Heat liquefies, pressure solidifies."

Then Ms J tells us something cool and interesting- there are earthquakes everyday (because of the moving crust), it is just a matter of how strong the earthquake is. Bet you'll only know that if you study Geography!
The crust is like the jigsaw puzzle on the Earth's surface. The plate boundary is where major natural disasters occur, such as flooding. Since Singapore does not experience any, does that mean we are not living near the plate boundary?
Anyways, another question popped out: What happens if plates hit each other? To know the answer, just stay tuned to the next lesson!
This lesson was great, as many interesting questions came out and thus we were able to learn more interesting stuff. It would be great if the lessons would forever be like that, with many smart questions being asked and answered. Geography is indeed one of the most interesting subject anyone can ever learn!

She has returned! ACE (based on the lesson on 18 Feb 2011)

Ms J's back! Of course, she has also brought with her an interesting lesson, as always...

Today we learnt more about rocks (yep, they are not just stuff that form the outer crust of the Earth...), to be specific, the different types of rocks- Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic rocks (You can refer to the recent blogpost for more information about them). Ms J wanted us to present what we have written on the worksheet she has given us the day before. She split us into groups, and we had to say what we have written out, although there were some stuff that we did not understand.

Ms J showed us some pictures of the rocks, and, as you know, they were magnificent! Different rocks of different colours, shapes and sizes. Oh yes, and different types. Then she started to explain in detail what exactly are 'grain size' and 'sediments' so that we can 'understand' rocks better.

Basically, grains are the 'small scale', and rocks are the 'large scale' (remember that many grains make up a rock and many rocks make up a land form!). So, that means that 'grain size' refers to the size of the grains that make up the rock. Sedmentary is defined as, in Dictionary.com, mineral or organic matter deposited by water, air, or ice. That tells us much more about the sedimentary rocks, eh?

We believe that there is so much more exciting stuff to learn about rocks. Geography is indeed one of the best and interesting subjects that we learn in Secondary school, especially when you get such a nice and approchable teacher and such a great class, and especially in ACE Geography!


The Rock Cycle
http://www.ontariogeoscience.net/keyconceptitems/rockcycle.html

In her absence...ACE

Hmmm...Miss J did not come on this Thursday. Joanne and I were wondering what had happened to her. However, in her absence, she left us an assignment to do. It was about rocks. We had to fill in the characteristics of the examples of the rocks provided. In the process, we learnt about the three types of rocks and the examples of each type of rock. The three main types of rocks are the igneous, the sedimentary and the metamorphic. Two examples of the igneous rock will be granite and basalt. Granite is coarse-grained while basalt is fine-grained. So, what comes to your mind when we mention coarse or fine grained? Big rice and small rice grains? NO...When it is coarse-grained, we meant that it was big and visible, while fine-grained refers to small. These two types of igneous rocks are made up of layers of magma or what we call, lava. Their textures are rough while their physical strengths are hard.

Now lets come to sedimentary rocks. We can very easily differentiate these rocks from the others as we can see the distinctive layers made by the minerals when the pressure caused to form them into rocks. Moreover, different minerals make different rocks. Usually, sedimentary rocks are softer than igneous and metamorphic rocks and when we say that, it does not mean pillow soft, but the soft that can be easily damaged by soil erosion or storms. Three examples of the sedimentary rocks will be the conglomerate, the limestone and shale. The conglomerate and the shale sedimenary rocks are fine-grained and is made by sediments. However, limestones are made by hardened remains of animals and plants. Some of the sedimentary rocks' textures are smooth while others are rough. The pictures below will give everyone a clearer idea of what is the information about.

As we can see, the layers of sedimentary rocks are very clear and concise. Beautiful aren't they?

Let us now go to metamorphic rocks. There are two examples of metamorphic rocks I would like to introduce everybody. They are marble and gnesis rocks. They are fine-grained and made up of bands. Furthermore, they have a foilated texture. Hmmm... can anyone guess what is the meaning of foilated? Chrystal came across a term called moon rocks on the web when she was doing some research. Is moon rock just a rock collected form the moon or there is something more to just a rock on the moon?

ACE

Hi! It's us again! This will be our second summary for the week. On Friday, 11 February, our teacher Ms J. talked about rocks with us. Due to time limits, she was not able to finish the whole chapter, but still, at least we learnt some things from her that day. Talking about rocks, what is everyone's idea about rocks? You must think, rocks might just be stones, pebbles, or even hard matter on the road, nothing much to study about them. But let me tell you, that actually you are WRONG. There are many things to learn about rocks when it comes to Geography. There are different types of rocks and rocks are solid objects on the ground. They make up massive landforms, like volcanoes and mountains. Why do we need to study rocks??? You ask. They are useless. However, rocks are more useful than you think they are. They contain clues about what the Earth was like in the past. Moreover, they assemble a historical record of a planet and trace events that occured long before humans had roamed the land. Amazing right? From this post, everyone can understand that rocks are not just ordinary solid matter that stays makes up the ground but that it contains different minerals and special features. AND the way the rocks are formed are linked with their appearances. If you want to know more about rocks, you can go to this website below as well.

http://ratw.asu.edu/aboutrocks_why.html

ACE

Whoa! It has been a week since our last geography lesson with Ms J. due to our Chinese New year celebrations. The following will be the summaries my partner and I have came up with for our ACE Geography lessons last week. They will be separated into different posts.
Last Thursday, 10th February, Ms J. had discussed with us of What is an atlas and the scales that are on the atlas. Well, what is an atlas then? It is a book of maps we might say. Moreover, maps find location. AND, a location varies from scales. There are two types of scales, LARGE scales and small scales. For Singapore, we are living on a very small scale and we are classified under the Asia Pacific Region. Large scales mostly refers to land. Under the topic land, we can classify them in eight different ways. The world, the region, the seven continents, countries cities, towns, comunities/ villages and individuals. All of them link together to create one big map. The world includes regions, regions includes the continents, the continents include countries and so on until it reaches the individuals.
How can we differetiate them then? We do so due to their scales, their population and their land area. The large bodies of the water on the Earth are divided into five oceans. The pacific ocean, indian ocean, Southern ocean, Arctic Ocean and lastly, the Atlantic ocean. The pacific ocean is located between South and North America, the indian ocean is located below India, the southern ocean is found above Antarctica, the arctic ocean is is found above Europe while the atlantic ocean is located between Africa and South America.

The picture below will give everyone a clearer picture of what I am saying.