The ancient Greeks proposed an Earth-centered view of the universe.
Prevailing winds toward a shoreline typically produce upwelling.
Most of the energy and mineral resources we use are renewable.
Standard sea level air pressure is 1013 millibars.
Submerged, flat-topped seamounts are known as guyots.
The west coast of South America and the east coast of North America have very
different continental margins.
The beginning of the Precambrian era is marked by the appearance of the first life
forms with hard parts.
The velocity of seismic waves generally increases with depth in the earth.
A mineral can be composed entirely of one element.
A major problem with Wegener’s Continental Drift Hypothesis was that he could not
find rocks or other geologic features that would have been continuous from one
continent to the next if the continents had been together.
Every metamorphic rock has a parent rock from which it formed.
An occluded front is depicted on a weather map as a line with semicircles on one side
and triangular points on the other side.
The windward sides of mountains are often wet.
Feeding stages in the food chain are known as trophic levels.
As a fluid (air or water) moves toward an area of lower pressure in the Northern
Hemisphere, the Coriolis effect results in counterclockwise circulation.
A V-shaped valley and no floodplain indicate a youthful, downcutting stream.
Basalt is the fine-grained equivalent of gabbro.
The main mechanism for melting at spreading ridges is decompression melting of
ultramafic mantle rock.
Most limestone has a biochemical origin.
A triggering mechanism, such as heavy rains or an earthquake, are necessary for mass
wasting to occur.
The Atlantic and Pacific basins have oceanic ridges; the Indian Ocean has no oceanic
ridge.
A playa is an intermittent lake on the floor of a desert valley.
Magmas are the product of melting in the deep part of the earth that forms a layer of
molten material called the asthenosphere.
All of the world’s largest telescopes are of the refracting type.
Relative humidity indicates amount of water vapor in the air.
Hawaii is the oldest island of the Hawaiian Island chain.
The formation of the solar system from a huge cloud of gases and dispersed particles is
known as the solar galactic hypothesis.
An element is defined by the number of electrons the orbit the nucleus.
The density of seawater is controlled by temperature and salinity.
A cirque represents an erosional feature formed in what was an important accumulation
zone for snow and ice at the upstream head of a glacier.
Electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom much like planets around the Sun, with inner
orbitals fixed and outer orbitals subject to exchange with other atoms to make
compounds.
Quartz forms at a lower temperature than olivine.
Altitude and precipitation are the two most important elements in a climatic description.
Fiords are glacier-cut valleys that flooded as sea level rose in post-glacial times.
The energy that creates surface ocean currents comes from prevailing winds.
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Sea level has risen and fallen significantly in the past history of the Earth due to climate
change.
Magma is currently forming beneath the Rockies.
Feldspars commonly decompose during weathering to clay minerals, silica, and soluble
constituents.
The largest known volcano in the solar system is on Mars.
In the last few years improvements in technology have allowed geologists to date single
grains of some minerals in rocks. A geologist separates 5 grains of the mineral zircon,
which can be dated by the Uranium-lead method, and the crystal retains parent and
daughter through weathering, erosion, and deposition. Thus, dating each mineral grain
only gives the age of the source rock that was eroded, to produce that sand, from which
the zircon grain is derived. The 5 grains yield ages of 160, 110, 2020, 66, and 162
million years. What do these ages tell you about the age of the sedimentary strata?
A) They are Precambrian rocks, older than 2020 million years.
B) They are between 160 and 162 million years.
C) They are younger than 66 million years.
D) There are no age constraints from this data; sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by
geochronology.
Engineers refer to any loose material on the surface of the Earth as soil. How does this
differ from the definition used in Earth sciences?
A) There is no difference, the definition is the same.
B) Earth scientists use the term soil only for the organic part of the surface materials.
C) Earth scientists only use the word soil to refer to the inorganic part of weathered,
surface materials.
D) An engineer’s “soil” is equivalent to what Earth scientists call regolith; soil has a
more specific meaning.
The best modern technique for obtaining high resolution bathymetry of the seafloor is
________.
A) sidescan sonar
B) echo sounding
C) seismic reflection profiling
D) multibeam bathymetry
Soil classifications, like biological classifications, use a taxonomy. The first syllable(s)
gives a descriptive term and last syllable is ________.
A) sol
B) soil
C) solt
D) drt
Why does magma rise toward the Earth’s surface?
A) because it is hot
B) because it is a liquid
C) because it is less dense than the material around it
D) because it is immiscible and cannot combine with the material around it
Igneous rock is formed ________.
A) by the weathering of preexisting rocks
B) by changes in mineral composition
C) at great depth within Earth
D) by crystallization of magma
The higher the temperature, the more likely it is that a rock will deform ________.
A) ductilely
B) brittlely
C) elastically
D) shearingly
________ have the highest velocities
A) Primary waves (P-waves)
B) Secondary waves (S-waves)
C) Surface waves
D) Refracted S-waves
The deep zone makes up about 80% of the ocean waters and it is characterized by
________.
A) water that gradually decreases in temperature and density with depth
B) water that gradually increases in temperature and density with depth
C) water that gradually increases in temperature and decreases in density with depth
D) water that gradually decreases in temperature and increases in density with depth
E) water with relatively uniform temperature and density throughout
Deep ocean trenches typically are not located adjacent to ________.
A) transform plate boundaries
B) volcanic island arc chains
C) young continental mountains
D) abyssal plains
Most granitic batholiths represent ________.
A) a deeply exhumed passive continental margin
B) a deeply exhumed forearc rock assemblage
C) magmas generated in a rift system, prior to development of a passive margin
D) the exhumed roots of a subduction related magmatic arc
Banded Iron Formations are interbedded iron oxides and chert that formed on the sea
floor between 3.5 and 2 billion years ago because ________.
A) iron and chert were very abundant in the early earth
B) iron was using the oxygen produced by bacteria and chert was a common ocean
deposit
C) chert was being deposited by bacteria and iron was a common ocean deposit
D) photosynthesis had not yet started to generate oxygen so iron and chert were the
deposited on the sea floor
E) outgassing produced both chert and iron oxide in roughly equal amounts and the
oceans became saturated with them
If Yellowstone were on the ocean floor, it would produce ________.
A) a chain of line islands, like Hawaii
B) an island arc
C) a trench
D) a mid-ocean ridge
When excited electrons decay to ground state, hydrogen emits along distinctive line
near the visible red. An astronomer observes what appear to be hydrogen emission lines
from a distant star but they are in the infrared spectral band. She concludes ________.
A) her instrument needs to be recalibrated
B) the star must be moving very fast away from Earth
C) the star must be moving very fast toward Earth
D) the star’s hydrogen emission must be being absorbed by water in the atmosphere,
which then re-emits in the infrared
What is the ideal way, if cost is no object, for a telescope to avoid atmospheric
disturbance?
A) Place it on a very high mountain.
B) Place it in a very dry climate, like the deserts in Chile.
C) Place it in space.
D) Place it on land, as far from the ocean as possible.
A widely cited theory associates active faults and earthquakes in China and southeast
Asia to the India-Eurasia collision. This theory suggests ________.
A) East Asia is moving toward the Himalaya, causing faulting and earthquakes
B) subduction beneath East Asia is pushing East Asia toward the Himalaya, forming
young mountains between the Himalaya and Pacific subduction zones
C) India is moving west relative to Eurasia, pulling central Asia away from East Asia
D) India is plowing into the “soft underbelly” of Asia, pushing East Asia eastward
The major difference between floods in humid regions and in dry regions is ________.
A) in dry regions, flooding is a very slow process because there is less water
B) in dry regions, flooding is a very fast process because there are fewer plants
C) in dry regions, flooding lasts much longer than in humid regions because the water
cannot soak into the baked desert soil.
D) in dry regions, flooding lasts only a short time because the water is immediately
soaked up by the dry desert soil.
Which of the following is a mineral as defined by a geologist?
A) boulder
B) concrete
C) sugar
D) salt
E) water
A ________ is the icicle-like speleothem that grows down from the roof of a cavern.
A) stalandite
B) stalactite
C) stalagmite
D) slagdite
The reason scientists believe the reflective bright nebulae contain more heavy materials
than the emission bright nebulae is that ________.
A) they reflect more colors than the emission nebulae
B) they glow brighter than an energy emission source could produce
C) they are brighter than a low density source could produce
D) they are dimmer than a low density source could produce
E) they are blue, and that color is associated with carbon
The change from thinking the continents are stationary to understanding that the outer
layer of the earth moves slowly nearly all of the time occurred primarily because
________.
A) we got space travel and could see the motions
B) we improved our surveying instruments significantly
C) we had two world wars and learned a lot from them about the oceans that explained
how continents moved
D) we began to make global observations that required recognition that the continents
and oceans had not always been in their current positions
One group of reptiles, exemplified by the fossil Archaeopteryx, led to the evolution of
________.
A) dinosaurs
B) mammals
C) cephalopods
D) birds
E) horses
A sand ridge connecting an island to the mainland or to another island is a ________.
A) jetty
B) tombolo
C) breakwater
D) sea stack
What type of volcano would be most likely to generate large landslides?
A) shield volcano
B) cinder cone
C) composite volcano
D) caldera
The least significant form of heat transfer in the atmosphere is ________.
A) contraction
B) convection
C) radiation
D) conduction
Tornadoes have embedded secondary vortices called suction vortices. Hurricanes also
have embedded secondary vortices, they are called ________.
A) storm surge vortices
B) hurricane suction vortices
C) tropical cyclone secondary vortices
D) tornadoes
________ are the dominant land plants of the Cenozoic era.
What is the most common place for sediment to be deposited?
A) rivers
B) beaches
C) mountains
D) oceans
The Mississippi River has an average discharge of 17,300 cubic meters per second but
the ________ River discharges 12 times more water than the Mississippi River.
A) Colorado
B) Nile
C) Yangtze
D) Amazon
E) Yukon
Deposits of which of the following minerals would never be considered an ore?
A) galena
B) hematite
C) chalcophyrite
D) quartz
What stream characteristic is measured by the size of the largest particle that a stream
can move?
What term denotes the percentage of open space or voids in a material?
Obsidian exhibits a(n) ________ texture.
“Perhaps more than any other single measurement, atmospheric pressure is the best
indicator of current and changing weather conditions.” Briefly discuss why this
statement is correct.
When an active cold front overtakes a warm front, a(n) ________ front forms.
What process involves identifying and matching rocks of similar ages in different
areas?
The name applied to large quantities of interstellar dust and gas is ________.
A(n) ________ marks the site where old, oceanic lithosphere begins its descent into a
subduction zone.
Igneous rocks are classified on the basis of what two main characteristics?
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
The major rivers in the U.S., including the Colorado and Rio Grande, originate in
mountainous regions with significant contributions from snow melt and then cross arid
regions before supplying the water needs for several cities in the U.S. and Mexico.
Discuss the potential impact of climate change on the water supplies.
A(n) ________ is the vast, relatively deep, flat, sediment-covered portion of the
deep-ocean basin.
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the
relationship among the majority of words/phrases. Choose the option which does not fit
the pattern.
Where would the words “head,” “mouth,” “steep gradient,” and “gentle gradient” be
located on the diagram below?
Climatic zones are often based on different types of vegetation that result from the
prevailing climatic conditions. Considering such zones, what are some of the potential
problems when using fossil plant assemblages to interpret ancient climates? What are
some of the factors (geological or otherwise) that would influence your conclusions?