Mass Movement (Soil Creep)

Soil creep is soil moving down a hill very slowly, usually less than an inch a year, because the ground is freezing, and then thawing out. When it freezes the ground is pushed upward and when it thaws it drops down a little lower on the slope than it was. Soil creep can move fences and things like that a little bit. 

Fossil fuels

I think we shouldn't use fossil fuels They are getting used up quickly, because they take millions of years to make themselves and we are using them up in only decades. It is not good to use them, for this reason, because we will have no significant energy source after it all runs out. They are also bad for the environment. When we use them they make a lot of pollution and stink up the air and everything else. Fossil fuels are also making global warming when we burn them. Also, companies that dig them up are really big and too powerful and don't want anyone else getting in control of selling energy. Fossil fuels are our primary source of energy, but it's a really good thing that people are starting to use things like wind power and solar power because fossil fuels are not reliable and are bad for us and the environment.

Coal

Coal is mostly made of carbon and hydrogen, but can also be made of oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.

It's made by a process that takes hundreds of millions of years. Coal originally comes from plants 300 million years old. The plants died and were covered with soil and water, which then got heated and compressed into coal.

Accuracy of Dante's Peak

In the movie Dante's Peak, there were some things that were accurate and some that weren't.

Some of the things that were are:

*They were using seismometers and measuring the acidity in the water to tell if the volcano was going to erupt.

*The volcano had lahars, lava and pyroclastic flows.

*There was a smaller eruption before the big one.

Some of the things that probably wouldn't happen quite that way in real life were:

*The dog probably wouldn't have survived.

*They probably wouldn't have been able to escape from the pyroclastic flows or make it over the lava.

*Everything probably wouldn't have happened so quickly, such as the lake suddenly turning acid when the two teenagers were in it.

Fossils

A fossil is evidence, in rock, of something that was once alive. These are pictures found online of different types of fossils.

These are cast and mold fossils because the one on the left is a hollow imprint of the swirly thing,  which means whatever living thing it was decayed and only this is left (making a cast);  the one on the right is a mold since it looks the same as the other one  only now the spaces are filled in with minerals.

This one is a trace fossil because it's not the actual remains or imprints of anything,  but it's a footprint preserved in the rock so it still shows proof of something alive.

This is an original remains fossil because the ant thing is completely preserved in amber,  which doesn't let it decay or anything, so it's still in its original state.

Relative dating homework

       

Picture 1 (Rock layers)

          I was asked to put these six rock layers in order. The newest layer would be number three, because it is an intrusion into all of the rock layers, and intrusions are always the newest.

          The second newest layer is number one, because it's the topmost layer. Number six is next because it's the layer directly under number one.

Picture 2

          If you move this section of rock (outlined in red) down, you can see which layers were together before the layers slid sideways.

Picture 3

          The layers outlined in green, blue and purple match up in the different parts. From this you can tell that when the layers were horizontal, number five would have been above number four, and newer.

Picture 4

          Looking at number two (in pink) and the other section of rock (also in pink), you can tell they are the same material. They were probably attached when the bottom layers were horizontal, and they might have slid around a little when the rocks shifted (when I tried to put them back together in the picture, they didn't quite match up). Number two is another intrusion which intruded through both numbers four and five, so it is younger than both of those, making it the fourth newest layer.

         Since number five is newer than four (see picture 3), five is the fifth newest layer and four is the oldest.

NEWEST

3

1

6

2

5

4

OLDEST