Most of the world’s landmass is in the northern hemisphere.
In the case of light, when a source is moving away, its light appears redder than it
actually is.
At any given moment on Earth, there are about 100 active thunderstorms.
Although fluorite and native sulfur are not metallic minerals, deposits of these materials
are still called ore deposits.
Salinity refers to all of the solid materials in seawater, both dissolved and visible.
The cycle of phases of the Moon is the basis for our month.
Subduction produces mountains because subduction zones are the upwelling zones of
mantle convection, which lifts the earth’s surface to form mountains.
Repeated freezing and thawing can be important in soil creep movements.
The Moon has highland areas which approach the height of mountains on Earth.
Manganese nodules do not accumulate below 4500 meters depth because the
manganese minerals are highly soluble in seawater below that depth.
If the earth rotated twice as fast as it does, the Coriolis force would be half as much as
on Earth.
Sir Isaac Newton built and used reflecting telescopes.
Nonmetallic minerals like halite and gypsum have no industrial uses.
Rocks are aggregates of minerals.
Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons.
Stars with a surface temperature 3000 K appear red in color.
One environmental problem associated with groundwater is land subsidence caused by
withdrawal.
The concept that the earth was a sphere was not known until the Renaissance, in
Columbus’s time.
Saturn’s rings are clusters of relatively small, individual particles; the rings observed on
Jupiter are violent storm clouds swirling above the polar regions of the planet.
Most of the water that evaporates from the oceans falls on land where it runs off to the
oceans again.
The large outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) contain huge amounts of
hydrogen and other light materials as part of their composition.
If two streams are otherwise identical, the stream with the smaller gradient would have
the highest velocity flow.
The second most important economic mineral resource extracted from the seafloor
today is manganese from manganese nodules.
Thunder is produced by lightning.
The North Pole is covered by glaciers.
After two half-lives, there is no longer any of the original radioactive material
remaining.
The horizontal distance separating successive wave crests is called the wave period.
Lunar eclipses last longer than solar eclipses.
In general, recrystallization tends to produce larger crystals.
Powerful, explosive, volcanic eruptions can result in climatic cooling for millions of
years following the eruption.
Anticyclones characteristically have winds blowing out from their centers.
Lowering of the water table around a pumping well results in a cone of infiltration.
Large earthquakes almost always produce new faults because the old faults tend to
“heal” in the long time that separates most large earthquakes.
There is no evidence of water on Mars or the Earth’s Moon.
Silicon-oxygen bonds are weak and cause cleavage to be common in silicate minerals.
Most severe thunderstorms that occur in the middle latitudes form along or ahead of
cold fronts.
Because the mixing ratio is expressed in units of mass, it is affected by changes in
pressure or temperature.
Turbidites and siliceous oozes are both biogenous sediments.
A savanna is a tropical grassland with scattered drought-tolerant trees.
The mass wasting process in steep mountain areas that causes accumulations of rock
debris called talus is called ________.
A) a slump
B) a rock avalanche
C) a rock fall
D) a rock slide
Gypsum, which is widely used in plaster and wallboard, is a member of the ________
group.
A) silicate
B) carbonate
C) halide
D) sulfate
Climates where evaporation exceeds precipitation are called ________ climates.
A) humid tropical
B) dry
C) humid middle-latitude
D) polar
E) highland
Breccia, a rock with angular particles, is likely to have traveled ________.
A) in a mountain stream
B) only a short distance
C) a long distance
D) in a glacier
Which color stars have the coolest surface temperature?
A) red
B) orange
C) yellow
D) blue
For more than 70 years, the best-known and most used climate classification system has
been the ________ classification.
A) Klingel
B) Kppen
C) Smith
D) Hutton
E) Saffir
Deep ocean trenches are surficial evidence for ________.
A) rifting beneath a continental plate and the beginning of continental drift
B) sinking of oceanic lithosphere into the mantle at a subduction zone
C) rising of hot asthenosphere from deep in the mantle
D) transform faulting between an oceanic plate and a continental plate
Ozone is important to humans because it ________.
A) absorbs infrared radiation which is harmful to humans
B) absorbs ultraviolet radiation with is harmful to humans
C) is a pollutant that is harmful to humans
D) reflects solar rays that would cause global warming
E) passes solar rays that would maintain our present climate range
Organisms that feed through a food web instead of a food chain are more likely to
survive because ________.
A) there is more biomass in a food web than in a food chain
B) food webs may contain organisms from different trophic levels
C) if a member of the food web diminishes in availability, there are still many other
things to eat
D) the variety of food in a web is healthier so the organisms are more likely to live a
long time
A natural levee is ________.
A) an erosional feature
B) a depositional feature
C) essentially parallel to its stream channel
D) both a depositional feature and essentially parallel to its stream channel
On the average, how much of the Sun’s energy that is intercepted by Earth is reflected
back to space?
A) 10%
B) 20%
C) 30%
D) 40%
Which of the following is not an advantage that radio telescopes have over optical
telescopes?
A) They are less affected by the conditions of the atmosphere.
B) They are generally less expensive.
C) They can operate 24 hours a day.
D) They have better resolution.
E) They can “see” through interstellar dust clouds.
Which one of the following statements concerning cinder cones is false?
A) They are small volcanoes with fairly steep sides.
B) They are built mostly or entirely during one eruptive cycle.
C) The cinders and other pyroclastic particles are consolidated into welded tuff.
D) The cinders most commonly are basaltic.
The daily tidal range is GREATEST during what period of the lunar cycle?
A) full moon
B) first quarter
C) new moon
D) A and C
Which of the following is associated with ocean ridges?
A) rift zones
B) mountainous topography
C) volcanic structures
D) all of these
If you are a sunbather sitting high and dry on a beach, sipping your drink and watching
the waves roll in, you are on ________.
A) the foreshore
B) a backshore berm
C) the shoreline
D) any of the above
In the late 1800’s various principles (original horizontality, inclusions, cross cutting
relations, etc. arte) were established and used to ________.
A) determine the age of the earth
B) determine the age of events on the earth
C) organize the order in which events occurred on earth
D) prove that evolution was a valid theory that could explain many geologic
observations
The latent heat of vaporization has the effect of cooling a liquid because ________.
A) a solid absorbs heat from the atmosphere when it becomes vapor
B) when something becomes a gas it releases heat, and the liquid gets cooler as a result
C) the gas molecules that form and leave the liquid are the higher temperature
molecules in the liquid, so the temperature of the liquid is reduced
D) the liquid that forms the gas molecules absorbs and stores heat until all of the liquid
becomes a gas
E) none of the above
Ocean floor averages about ________ km depth below sea level.
A) 2
B) 4
C) 6
D) 8
The basic concept of Uniformitarianism is ________.
A) nothing has changed since the earth was formed
B) geology has not changed since the earth was formed but other things do change
C) geology changes constantly but the rules that control those transformations do not
change
D) there is a predictable way that the laws of nature change over time and we are
beginning to understand them
E) evolution, Plate Tectonics, and similar theories are all related and can be viewed as
the grand theory of Uniformitarianism.
Sea level rise can be caused by ________.
A) the formation of supercontinents
B) rapid erosion from continents that increase the sediment load in the oceans
C) fast seafloor spreading
D) slow seafloor spreading
E) slow erosion from continents that increase the size of land masses and displace water
The figure below shows a ________ boundary.
A) convergent
B) divergent
C) hot spot
D) transform
Hale discovered that sunspots were associated with magnetic fields. What happens to
these magnetic fields during a full sunspot cycle?
A) They die away.
B) They get stronger.
C) They get weaker.
D) They change polarity.
A very long-lived magma source located deep in the mantle is called a ________.
A) magma welt
B) basalt spout
C) melt well
D) hot spot
Most geologists think the elevation of mountains above sea level is limited by earth’s
gravity because ________.
A) rocks can never reach escape velocity
B) rock cliffs are subject to gravity failure and can only be about 1km high
C) the earth’s mantle is too weak to support the load of large mountains
D) thickening of the crust in mountain belts produces a weak deep crust the spreads by
gravity collapse, limiting the elevation
A maritime Polar (mP) air mass is ________.
A) cold and dry
B) cold and humid
C) warm and dry
D) warm and humid
If air at sea level with a temperature of 27oC is forced up a mountain slope and the air’s
dew point at the condensation level is 14oC, at what elevation will condensation begin?
A) 2600 meters
B) 1400 meters
C) 2700 meters
D) 1300 meters
Thermohaline circulation is ________.
A) shallow circulation at low latitudes driven by surface evaporation making seawater
more dense, which then sinks and drives upwelling
B) deep circulation of water driven entirely by cold, saline water descending to the
ocean floor at the poles and flowing along the bottom of the ocean
C) deep circulation of water driven by a combination of cold temperature and high
density related to high salinity from formation of sea ice, producing descending high
density waters that flow southward to equatorial regions
D) the circulation that occurs in shallow, evaporate basins when salt begins to
crystallize, releasing heat by latent heat of fusion and heating the water mass, forcing
shallow convection in the water column
Which one of the objects listed below has the largest size?
A) galactic clusters
B) globular clusters
C) galaxies
D) stars
E) nebula
Which of the following best describe the E soil horizon?
A) regolith zone
B) erosion zone
C) residual zone
D) leaching zone
The ________ Ocean has more extensive abyssal plains than the Pacific Ocean because
it has fewer trenches to trap sediments moving down the continental slope.
A) Indian
B) Atlantic
C) Arctic
D) none of these
One disadvantage to living near the surface of the ocean is ________.
A) strong currents bring rapid changes to the environment
B) maneuvering in the water can be difficult and make it a problem to avoid predators
C) waves create difficulty in finding abundant food
D) too many other marine organisms live near the surface so competition for food is
difficult.
Which of the following is not a way that seismic waves travel in the earth?
A) refraction
B) reflection
C) diffusion
D) diffraction
If you could modify or replace the Kppen classification system what information would
you incorporate that is not currently part of the system?
Label the mechanisms of heat transfer on the diagram below.
Explain why crevasses only penetrate partway through a glacier. What limits their
depth?
Carefully study each illustration below to determine the type(s) of geologic
structure(s) it contains. Match each one to the correct answers listed.
________
The ________ is the temperature to which a parcel of air would need to be cooled in
order to reach saturation.
Exhumed basins contain ________ rocks in the center of the structure and domes
contain ________ rocks in the center.
In the western Pacific, hurricanes are called ________.
What is the name of the localized lowering of the water table shown in the diagram
below?
An unconformity in which the strata on either side are essentially parallel is termed a(n)
________.
The motion of a star can be determined using the ________ effect.
Shorelines are temporary geologic and topographic features. Explain this statement.
On the blanks provided below, fill in the name of the specific type of geologic features
that have been labeled.
Tropical wet and dry climates are located ________ of the wet tropics and ________ of
the tropical deserts.
Flat-topped volcanic structures located on the floor of the deep ocean basin are termed
________.
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.
crust mantle lithosphere core
What type of fog forms in valleys at night?
In natural systems, mechanisms that drive or enhance change are called ________.