Black smokers can be found along subduction zones.
All isotopes are unstable.
The hydrologic cycle is off-balance because more liquid is brought in via comets and
meteorites each year.
The early Earth was not hospitable to life as we know it because of meteorite
bombardment, an oxygen-poor atmosphere, and the molten state of the planet for the
first few million years.
There is no theoretical upper limit to the Richter Scale.
Rates of physical weathering in deserts are high, even though there isn’t a great deal of
precipitation, because it is usually heavy when rain does fall.
Streams carry most of their sediment load in the form of suspended load.
Black smokers along the Juan de Fuca Ridge are responsible for massive sulfide
deposits.
Wind in arid regions produces more erosional landforms than depositional landforms.
The maria are the light, highly cratered highlands visible on the moon.
Oceanic ridges form as a result of compressional stress.
Stalactites grip tightly to the floor of a cave whereas stalagmites hang from the ceiling.
Dip will always be 90 away from strike.
Temperatures will decrease with increasing depth into the Earth.
Point bars are locations where erosion occurs whereas cutbanks are locations where
deposition occurs.
Mudflows are big enough to move in any direction, regardless of the orientation of the
landscape.
Most faults are locked in place, except for brief, abrupt movements when sudden
slippage produces earthquakes.
Uranium is the primary fuel used in nuclear power plants.
The raw material for coal is dead marine organisms.
Sea level rises during a glaciation because glaciers are pushing down on the crust,
which deforms the ocean basins.
A true desert is defined by how hot it is.
Rocks subjected to heat will be more likely to go through brittle deformation when
stressed.
Chemical weathering will break down a rock by changing the molecular compounds
that make up the rock.
Oceanic plateaus form from turbidity currents that flow down the continental slope.
Earthquakes occur along preexisting faults only.
Slippage along faults occurs all at once.
Stromatolites went extinct at the end of the Permian Period along with 95 percent of all
marine species on Earth.
Most glaciers worldwide are currently in a state of retreat.
When the three parts of the Milankovitch Cycle align, there will be harsher winters in
the middle to high latitudes with less snowfall and warmer summers bringing an
increase in snowmelt.
Most mountain ranges formed through cooling of the Earth’s crust, which resulted in
wrinkling as it contracted.
Shear stress is a type of confining pressure.
If a shoreline remains stable over time, an irregular coast will be transformed into a
smoother, straighter coast.
Forearc basins will consist of thick sequences of highly deformed sedimentary rocks.
Clay’s porosity is high, but its permeability is low, which means that it has a low
specific yield.
Recent studies have indicated that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded rather than
cold-blooded.
The more oxygen ions that are shared in silicate minerals, the higher the
oxygen-to-silicon ratio.
Surface waves will move equally in all directions away from the focus.
If a groundwater well pumps enough water to draw down the water table, the drawdown
will increase the slope of the water table, which will increase the velocity of
groundwater.
Oxygen was one of the main gases in the early atmosphere.
Earthquakes with a Richter magnitude less than 2.0 are generally not felt by humans.
The white granite of the Idaho Batholith near Boise, Idaho, contains dark gray xenoliths
of metamorphic material. Which is older? How do you know?
A) Granite; the principle of superposition
B) Xenoliths; the principle of cross-cutting relations
C) Granite; the principle of unconformities
D) Xenoliths; the principle of inclusions
Why is quartz a bad mineral to use to determine a metamorphic environment?
A) Because it is not common in metamorphic rocks
B) Because silicate minerals do not metamorphose
C) Because quartz is stable over a wide range of metamorphic settings
D) Because it can only be used in hydrothermal metamorphism
Match the shoreline feature with the correct definition.
A) An isolated rock column left behind after the collapse of a sea arch
B) Ridge of sand that connects the mainland to an island
C) Elongated ridge of sand projecting out into a bay
D) Bench created by waves crashing into a cliff
E) A sandbar that completely crosses a bay
1. Sea stack
2. Tombolo
3. Wave-cut platform
4. Spit
5. Baymouth bar
What is a fault?
A) A fracture in a rock along which motion has occurred
B) A stress fracture created by rocks stretching and pulling apart near the surface
C) A solution pathway created by carbonic acid
D) Foliation in a rock that acts as a plane of weakness
What coastal erosion feature is visible in this image?
A) Sea stack
B) Estuary
C) Wave-cut platform
D) Sea arch
Put the layers of Earth in order from the surface (First Layer) to the center (Fourth
Layer).
A) Outer core
B) Upper mantle
C) Crust
D) Lower mantle
E) Inner core
1. First Layer (Surface)
2. Second Layer
3. Third Layer
4. Fourth Layer
5. Fifth Layer (Center of Earth)
Which tectonic boundary is associated with compressional stress?
A) Convergent
B) Divergent
C) Transform
D) Dip-slip
________ weathering is when physical forces break solid rock into smaller sediments.
A) Mechanical
B) Chemical
C) Spheroidal
D) Differential
What substance makes ion migration easier in the later stages of magma crystallization,
which allows abnormally large mineral crystals to form and create pegmatites?
A) Water
B) Oxygen
C) Silica
D) Iron
Identify the igneous textures visible in Images A, B, and C in the
figure above.
1. A
2. B
3. C
A) Glassy
B) Vesicular
C) Aphanitic
Which of the following materials will form through evaporation?
A) Feldspars
B) Geodes
C) Salt
D) Limestone
You are in charge of emergency planning in Electron, Washington, when it is brought to
your attention that the entire town is built upon the remains of eruption materials from
Mount Rainier, which is less than 30 miles away. Using the past volcanic hazard history
of Mount Rainier, which volcanic hazard would most likely affect your town?
A) Pyroclastic flow
B) Lahar
C) Lava flow
D) Volcanic landslide
E) Earthquakes
The dominant plant group during the Mesozoic Era was ________.
A) exosperms
B) methanogens
C) angiosperms
D) gymnosperms
In which layer of the atmosphere is the ozone layer found?
A) Troposphere
B) Stratosphere
C) Thermosphere
D) Mesosphere
Which layer of the Earth is the thickest?
A) Crust
B) Mantle
C) Outer core
D) Inner core
What sedimentary structure is visible in this image?
A) Mudcracks
B) Graded bedding
C) Ripplemarks
D) Cross-bedding
Which of the following spheres is not part of the climate system?
A) Cryosphere
B) Asthenosphere
C) Hydrosphere
D) Biosphere
What percentage of Earth’s liquid freshwater is in the form of groundwater?
A) 97.2%
B) 96%
C) 0.62%
D) 0.03%
What shape do glacial troughs generally display?
A) V
B) W
C) Y
D) U
Which of the following locations is a remnant of a forearc basin?
A) Death Valley, CA
B) Lake Baikal, Siberia
C) Snake River Plain, ID
D) Great Valley, CA
What is the average density of continental crust?
A) 2.7 g/cm3
B) 3.0 g/cm3
C) 3.3 g/cm3
D) 5.6 g/cm3
Defined by breaking waves in the surf zone, which two terms describe the directions of
water movement associated with a wave breaking on the beach?
A) Fetch and swell
B) Emergence and submergence
C) Swash and backwash
D) Surf and beach
How does the angle of subduction affect the dimensions of the forearc basin?
A) Shallow angle of subduction leads to a wide forearc basin
B) Steep angle of subduction leads to a narrow forearc basin
C) Steep angle of subduction leads to a wide forearc basin
D) Shallow angle of subduction closes the forearc basin
Label the correct parts of the seafloor for each blank in the image above.
1. A
2. B
3. C
A) Continental Shelf
B) Continental Rise
C) Continental Slope
Below is a list of cities that were all struck by earthquakes. However, in the case of
these disasters, hazards associated with earthquakes accounted for more deaths than the
earthquake itself. Match the event with the hazard it is most associated with.
A) Tsunami
B) Fire
C) Subsidence/landslides
D) Liquefaction
1.San Francisco, California (1906)
2. Alaska Earthquake/Good Friday Earthquake (1964)
3. Earthquake in Marina District in Loma Prieta, California (1989)
4. Japan (2011)
What is the name of the preexisting rock through which intrusive igneous bodies
intrude?
A) Acid rock
B) Parent rock
C) Stock
D) Country rock
________ refers to the changes in shape or position of a rock body in response to
differential stress.
A) Stress
B) Deformation
C) Compression
D) Brittle failure
Which of the four spheres of Earth is the most extensive?
A) Geosphere
B) Atmosphere
C) Hydrosphere
D) Biosphere
Match the silicate structure with the appropriate mineral example.
1. Independent tetrahedra
2. Single chain
3. Double chain
4. Sheet
5. Network
A) Muscovite
B) Amphibole
C) Olivine
D) Pyroxene
E) Quartz
Which of the following locations would be most likely to see large-scale, rapid mass
wasting?
A) Florida Everglades
B) Central Illinois
C) Mojave Desert
D) The Rocky Mountains
You are monitoring a seismograph in Seattle. One morning, your instrument records an
earthquake approximately 2000 km away. From that information, can you determine
where the earthquake occurred?
A) Yes, because seismographs can indicate direction as well as distance.
B) Yes. You could take the distance and match it up with known fault lines to find the
epicenter.
C) No, because seismographs can’t pick up earthquakes from that far away.
D) No, because you would need information from more than one seismograph to plot
the epicenter.
Which of the following is an example of a relative date?
A) The Cenozoic era began sixty-five million years ago.
B) A headstone in a cemetery has the date a person died.
C) The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776.
D) The Silurian period came before the Devonian period.
Along which features might one expect to see a deep-ocean trench?
A) Abyssal plains
B) Mountain ranges
C) Oceanic ridges
D) Seamounts
Which of the following locations will see the deposition of sylvite and gypsum?
A) Shallow marine environments
B) Evaporating sea basins
C) Groundwater moving through a rock
D) Volcanic ash settling out in a lake
Why is it so difficult for wind to pick up clay-sized particles?
A) They are too large for the wind to carry.
B) The wind has a near-zero velocity closest to the surface and can’t pick them up.
C) The clay particles are often buried under larger sediments.
D) There is too much clay to carry.
Explain why using intensity alone as a measurement of seismic power can pose
problems for truly understanding the energy released by the earthquake.
Compare and contrast the thickness of the material that makes up ocean basins and
continents and how they sit on the mantle. (Which one sits higher on the mantle and
why?)
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union developed a formal definition for what
constitutes a planet. What is the definition of a planet?
How are sound waves used to detail the shape of the seafloor?
Glacial Lake Agassiz went through many periods of catastrophic drainage starting at
13,000 years ago. Some of these periods of catastrophic change have been linked to
periods of cooling climate, particularly when the lake drained through the St. Lawrence
Seaway and into the North Atlantic. How would the drainage of Lake Agassiz affect the
climate to such a degree that cooling would result?
Students new to mineral identification often confuse shiny, dark-colored nonmetallic
minerals for those minerals with a metallic luster. Explain how streak can be useful for
telling these minerals apart.
List the intrusive igneous textures below.
Phaneritic, aphanitic, glassy, pyroclastic, pegmatitic
What is the role that depth can play on cooling and crystallization of igneous rocks?
What combination of incoming waves and backwash will result in a longshore drift?
Explain.
What factors influence the rate of glacial erosion?
A burrowing animal is digging its tunnel through rocky soil, moving fresh material to
the surface. How is this animal contributing to the weathering of that material?
What would happen to the peridotite if there was a decrease in pressure from that at the
depth of 100 km?
The Basin and Range province is an extensional region in the American Southwest
characterized by roughly parallel mountains ranges separated by broad, flat-bottomed
valleys. What sort of structural features would you expect to find in this region?
Compare and contrast thrust faults and reverse faults.
What role does heat play in creating new minerals or new crystalline structures in
metamorphic rocks?
What structural features are visible in this image?
Major coastal cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, have to find a delicate balance
between supplying enough water for a healthy, growing city and preventing
contamination of their groundwater supplies with saltwater due to overpumping. What
steps could be taken to counteract the effects of saltwater contamination without
abandoning the well? Explain.
Discuss how oceanic crust forms. What process generates the necessary magma? Also,
be sure to discuss ophiolite sequences and discuss how the formation of each layer
contributes to the formation of the crust.