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Earth Science

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Earth Science

Submitted By:
Hamael Sajjad
( 2017-2119)
Program:
B.ed( Hons) Elementy
Subject:
Earth science

Submitted to :
Sir Shamim Ullah
Historical Background

From the earliest times men wondered about the earth around them and about the sun, moon and
stars overhead. Their thoughts were handed down from one generation to another, and were
continually changing in the process. If these early men were less than scientific their ideas did help
lay the foundations for the method of inquiry which mark modern science. Indeed , the full mean of
modern and space science can be understood only when they are viewed against their historical
background.

Universe

Formation of the Universe


Before Hubble, most astronomers thought that the universe didn’t change. But if the
universe is expanding, what does that say about where it was in the past? If the universe is
expanding, the next logical thought is that in the past it had to have been smaller. How Did
the Universe Form?
The Big Bang theory - (the theory that the universe originated sometime between 10 billion
and 20 billion years ago from the cataclysmic explosion of a small volume of matter at
extremely high density and temperature) is the most widely accepted cosmological
explanation of how the universe formed
According to the Big Bang theory, the universe began about 13 to 14 billion years ago.
Everything that is now in the universe was squeezed into a very small volume. Imagine the
entire known universe compressed into a single, hot, chaotic mass. An explosive expansion
caused the universe to start growing rapidly. All the matter and energy in the universe, and
even space itself, resulted from this expansion What came before the Big Bang? Thereway
for scientists to know since there is no remaining evidence.

After the big bang


In the first few moments after the Big Bang, the universe was unimaginably hot and dense.
As the universe expanded, it became less dense and began to cool. After only a millionth of
a second, protons (hydrogen nuclei) and neutrons could form. After a few minutes some of
these subatomic particles came together to create helium

The Size of the Solar System


The universe contains an estimated 100 to 400 billion galaxies, of which our Milky Way is
one. The Milky Way itself contains an estimated 100to 400 billion stars, of which our Sun is
one. The Milky Way is a barred-spiral galaxy with a radius of around 50,000 light-years (a
lightyear being the distance that light travels in one year), and the Sun and its solar system
are around 30,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, . Because it is our planet, we know a lot more about
Earth than we do about any other planet.
After a long time ago, the earth was hot so hot that the water boiled and the sky was full pf
steam. Nothing could live on account of the heat. There were no sea or land plants or
animals on the earth.
In some places the rocks had melted and streams of thick white hot lava flowed over the
land and into the water . Of course there was no one there to see the great clouds of steam
that rose up to the sky when all this melted rock flowed into the sea.
The up rushing steam probably caused thunderstorms, so that the sky may have been full of
lightening, and if anyone had been there they would have heard roars of thunder nearly all
the time.
The clouds were so thick that the sunlight never reached the Earth. Most of the light came
from the flashes of lightening . Many meteors, or big shooting stars rushed the earth
through the streaming air and struck the earth.
So the Earth was once a huge ball of melted liquid rock and it was about the same size as it
is now. . then slowly earth begun to cool down. For a long time the crust of the Earth was so
hot that the water could stay on the surface it was boiled and turned into steam and made
huge clouds in the sky . finally the land cooled and rain was possible the water accumulated
into places and the ponds grew into lakes .

Atmosphere
Earth is a very diverse planet. Water appears as vast oceans of liquid. Water is also seen as
ice at the poles or as clouds. Earth also has large masses of land. Earth’s average surface
temperature is 14°C (59°F). At this temperature, water is a liquid. The oceans and the
atmosphere help keep Earth’s surface temperatures fairly steady.
Earth is the only planet known to have life. Conditions on Earth are ideal for life! The
atmosphere and magnetic field filters out harmful radiation. Water is abundant. Carbon
dioxide was available for early life forms. The evolution of plants introduced more oxygen
for animals.
Just as earth have several layers below the crust , there are several layers of atmosphere
above the crust. The layer closest to the ground is troposphere is the one which we are
most familiar. Almost all our weathers occur in this layer. It contains most of the clouds ,
which consist or water droplets and ice crystals. The next layer is above the troposphere is
about ten miles thick and is called the stratosphere. The temperature of this layer is abut -
40 F.
Just above the stratosphere the Ozone layer exists it rises to the height of 500 miles. It is the
protective layer shielding life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. But this
layer is being depleted and is getting thinner over Europe , Asia , North America and
Antarctica. Mesosphere is the next layer extending from 50 to 60 Km above earth surface. It
is a cold layer. The next layer is Thermosphere that extends from 80 km above the Earth
surface. The temperature is hot may be as high as thousands of degrees as the few
molecules that are present in thermosphere recieve extraordinary large amount of energy
from sun.

Air
The hardest thing of all is to understand just what air is. The air is made of millions of very
small particles so small that you cannot see eve with the microscope. All these particles are
not alike . there are several kinds that are quite different from each other. Most of the air
we breathe contains two types of particles , or atoms. One kind is called Oxygen having
scientific symbol O . and the other type is Nitrogen having symbol N. when oxygen travel
with other atom then it form a molecule O2 and for Nitrogen N2. . We cannot live unless we
are breathing O2 all the time. There is also another particles in ai carbon dioxide.
Represented by CO2. .
CO2 .and . N2 came from volcanoes and still come from those who are overflowing with
streams and lava from time to time, for lava is full of gases.

Plate tectonics `
The Earth is divided into many plates. These plates move around on the surface. The plates
collide or slide past each other. One may even plunge beneath another. Plate motions cause
most geological activity. This activity includes earthquakes, volcanoes, and the buildup of
mountains. The reason for plate movement is convection in the mantle. Earth is the only
planet that we know has plate tectonics.
Earth’s Motions and Moon
Earth rotates on its axis once every day. This is the length of an Earth day. Earth orbits the
Sun once every 365.24 days. This is the length of an Earth year. Earth has one large moon.
The moon orbits Earth once every 29.5 days with respect to the sun. This moon is covered
with craters, and also has large impact basins that were later filled with lava. Many
astronomers think that the Moon came into being from material that flew into space after
Earth and a Mars-sized object collided during the formation of the solar system. This moon
is not a captured asteroid like other moons in the solar system.

Inside Earth
Earth was hot when it formed. A lot of Earth’s heat is leftover from when our planet formed,
four-and-a-half billion years ago. Earth makes some of its own heat. Earth is cooling now –
but very, very slowly. Earth is close to a steady temperature state. Over the past several
billion years, it might have cooled a couple of hundred degrees. Earth keeps a nearly steady
temperature, because it makes heat in its interior. The process by which Earth makes heat is
called radioactive decay.

The Earth’s layers

• The crust is less than 1% of Earth by mass. The oceanic crust is mafic (minerals with
high levels of ferromagnesian), while continental crust is often more felsic (minerals
that are primarily made of feldspars and quartz) rock.
• The mantle is hot, ultramafic rock. It represents about 68% of Earth's mass.
• The core is mostly iron metal. The core makes up about 31% of the Earth.

• The lithosphere is composed of both the crust and the portion of the upper mantle
that behaves as a brittle, rigid solid.
• The asthenosphere is partially molten upper mantle material that behaves
plastically and can flow.
• The mesosphere refers to the mantle in the region under the lithosphere, and the
asthenosphere, but above the outer core. The difference between mesosphere and
asthenosphere is likely due to density and rigidity differences, that is, physical
factors, and not to any difference in chemical composition.
Mountains and Rivers
As we found that Earth was so hot that all the water in the ocean was turned into steam
and rose up in the sky in the form of dense clouds . Then the torrents of rain fell down
and even before they reached the earth were turned again into steam. Finally the earth
cooled enough to form a crust, and when that got cold and hard, the rain could stay on
the earth without boiling and becoming steam . Then oceans grew in the hollow places,
and there was blue sky with only occasional storms.

“A mountain is a landform that rises high above its surroundings. Taller


than a hill, it usually has steep slopes and a rounded or sharp peak. Mountains are
rarely found alone”. Groups of mountains are called ranges. Lines of ranges form
mountain belt.
The rain on these great continents that we have been describing settled into the
hollow places and formed big pools of water, which we now call ponds and lakes that
they overflowed. The overflowing water then wore a channel all the way to the ocean.
These channels we call Rivers.

Volcanoes
Sometimes the crust of the Earth has wrinkled and jammed by the slow cooling and
shrinking of the earth, cracks have been made in the rocks and then the hot melted rock
from far down has come out and and flowed over the land like molasses. we call melted
rock that bubbles up from inside earth Lava.
Some times the crack in the Earth is shaped more or less like a round hole and the lava
comes out it spread all around that hole and cools into rock. Sometimes later move lava
comes and flows over the mound and makes it higher after a long, long time the mound
grows into a mountain , which we call a Volcano. The hole in the center through which
the hot melted lava occasionally come is called the Crater. Lava as we call it not only
flows down the side of a mountain but keeps on flowing over the land below and
burying everything that is in its path.
When a city is near a volcano it is always in danger of being buried someday by a great
mass of lava that may flow down the side of the mountain.
A mound, hill, or mountain formed from hot magma exiting the crust and piling up on
the land or beneath the seas.

Eruption gases are...?


water vapor from groundwater, seawater, or the atmosphere. Sulfur Dioxide, nitrogen,
hydrogen, and carbon monoxide from chemical changes in magma and rock.

Oceans
An ocean is a body of water that composes much of a planet's hydrosphere. On Earth,
an ocean is one of the major conventional divisions of the World Ocean. These are, in
descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. The
word "ocean" is often used interchangeably with "sea" in American English. Strictly
speaking, a sea is a body of water partly or fully enclosed by land, though "the sea"
refers also to the oceans.
c

1. Arctic ocean
2. Atlantic ocean
3. Indian ocean
4. Pacific ocean
5. Southern Ocean
Continent:

A continent is one of several very large landmasses of the world. Generally identified by
convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven regions are commonly regarded as
continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, they are:

Asia

Africa

North America

South America

Antarctica

Europe

Australia

Minerals
Minerals is a name for thousand of different of material in the Earth. Everything made of
rock or sand or cement is made of minerals _ many different kinds of them.
Minerals are actually very common substances, sand and soil are but two common
examples of substances that consist largely of minerals . In fact a mineral is an naturally
occruing inorganic solid that is characterized by a definite chemical composition and by a
specific and regular arrangements of atoms.

Rocks
A rock can be defined simply as an aggregate of one of more minerals here the term
aggregate implies that the minerals are found together as a mixture in which he properties
of individual minerals are retained. Although most rocks are composed of more than one
mineral, certain are commonly found by themselves in large quantities. They are made up of
elements
A common example is a mineral calcite which frequently the dominant constituent in large
rocks units, where it is given the name Limestone.
Physical properties of minerals
Minerals are naturally occurring solids formed by inorganic processes. Each mineral have an
orderly arrangement of atoms (crystalline structures ) and a definite chemical composition
which give it unique set of physical properties.
Crystal Form : The crystal form is a external expression of amineral that reflects the orderly
internal arrangement of atoms. E.g Quartz
Color Although color is the most obvious feature of a mineral. It is possibly the reliable.
Slightly impurities in the common mineral Quartz , for example give it a variety f colors ,
including pink , purple.
Luster is the appearance or quality o reflected from the surface of a mineral.
Hardness one of the most diagnostic properties of mineral is hardness.

Glaciers
A glacier keeps sliding downhill all the time .As its upper end it is fed by snowfalls, as an
ordinary river is fed by rainfalls .And just ,as a rivers scours away the land through which it
flows so does a glacier. As it slides along , the ice picks up sand, pebbles and even huge
boulders, and pushes them down hill , crunching and grating them under enormous
pressure and scouring and scratching away at the mountain underneath. Year after year, the
hard , rocky mountain is ground down by this river of ice.

End note

Geology – is the study of the Earth, with the general exclusion of present-day life, flow within the
ocean, and the atmosphere. The field of geology encompasses the composition, structure, physical
properties, and history of Earth's components, and the processes by which it is shaped. Geologists
typically study rock, sediment, soil, rivers, and natural resources.

No doubt our Earth is the most important of the nine planets which circle the sun. the sun is the
source of energy for life on the Earth.The history of geology is concerned with the development of
the natural science of geology. Geology is the scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of
the Earth. Scotsman James Hutton is considered to be the father of modern geology. In recent
years, geology has continued its tradition as the study of the character and origin of the Earth, its
surface features and internal structure.
References :

(Herman & Nina Schneider) Rocks , River &the Changing Earth, William R. Scott, Inc., New
York, 1952.

( Richard M Harbeck; Lloyd K Johnson), Earth and Space Science , New York, Holt, Rinehart
and Winston 1965..

(Edward J. Tarbuck, Frederick K. Lutgens) ;Earth Science Fourth Edition , Charles E. Merrill,
Columbus Toronto London Sydney, 1985.

(Nancy E Spaulding ; Samuel N Namowitz); Earth Science Evanston, III. McDougal Littell, New
York,2007

(William Maxwell Reed), The Earth For Sam, Harcourt Brace, New York 1960.

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