Name______Date ______Teacher: P W Y Blk ____ NB#____
Greatest Discoveries with Bill Nye: Earth Science
Description
While on his quest to uncover the top 100 scientific discoveries of all time, Bill Nye checks in with leading scientists to discuss the greatest discoveries ever made in the field of earth science.
Greatest Discoveries with Bill Nye: Earth Science, Science Channel, 2005. Full Video.
Discovery Education. Web. 17 November 2015.
The following is in the order the information will be as Bill Nye walks you through the Science behind the Geology of our planet:
1- The Outer Core
1. The first layer of Earth is the containing the continents is called ______, a skin of rock covering the planet.
2- The Inner Core
2. The core that Lehman had found was the Earth’s
______.
3. The core that Richard Oldem had discovered turned out to be the Earth’s
______.
4. At the center of the core, the temperature can be as high as ______ºF, which is 2,000º hotter than the surface of the sun.
3- Continental Drift
5. Pangaea comes from the Greek and means
______.
4- The Sea-Floor is Spreading
6. When the United States entered the war,
______was a geology professor at Princeton University.
7. In 1953 a 12,000 mile long mountain range called the______
was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean.
8. Harry Hess had discovered that the seafloor was
______.
9. The process that recycles the crust is called
______.
5- Plate Tectonics
10. The surface of the planet is broken into large interconnected ______, that are constantly in motion.
11. The plates are ______, they are not______.
12. A ______fault is where the plates move by one another.
13. Weather has so many ______it can change quickly.
14.One lightning bolt can strike with the power of ______million volts.
6- Troposphere and Stratosphere
15. Troposphere means… ______
16. Stratosphere means… ______
7- Cosmic Radiation
17. Victor Hess discovered
______.
18. It is estimated that each year more than ______people die from cancer caused by the small natural dose of radiation.
8- Magnetic Field Reversal
19. The Earth’s magnetic field acts as a ______, protecting our planet from the Sun’s dangerous radiation.
20. The Earth’s magnetic field has reversed about ______times in the last 20 million years.
9- Periodic Ice Ages
21. Every______years or so the angle of the Earth’s axis tilts slightly.
22. The Earth may have experienced as many as ______ice ages over the last several million years.
10- Global Warming
23. Over the past 100 years the surface temperature of the Earth has increased about ______ºF.
24. Keeling found that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing at a rate of ______billion tons per year.
25. The South Cascade Glacier has retreated by ______miles over the last century.
26. It would take ______the size of Mt. St. Helens erupting every day of the year to equal the amount of CO2 emissions people produce.
11- Geological Change
27. The mechanism of the slow process of geologic change was ______.
12- Radiometric Dating
28. Mineral samples of uranium always contained traces of ______.
29. If we compare the entire history of the Earth to a span of 24 hours, 1 million years would go by in about ______minutes.
30. The Earth ______all living things.
For each Vocabulary Term – read the definition and then in the context sentence fill in the missing word to make the complete sentence a factual statement:
Crust
Definition: The outer layer of the Earth
Context: The Earth’s crust is ______under the continents than it is under the oceans.
Earthquake
Definition: Shaking and vibrating at the surface of the Earth resulting from underground movement along a fault plane
Context: Earthquakes have helped scientists define the size and shape of ______plates.
Mantle
Definition: The layer of the Earth between the crust and the core
Context: The ______in the mantle causes the Earth’s plates to move.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Definition: An underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Iceland to Antarctica
Context: ______from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge creates new oceanic crust.
Plate tectonics
Definition: A scientific theory that unifies many of the features and characteristics of continental drift and seafloor spreading into a coherent model; it has revolutionized geologists’ understanding of continents, ocean basins, mountains, and Earth history.
Context: The theory of ______did not gain wide scientific interest until the 1960s.
Subduction
Definition: When an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate and sinks below the latter; results in the creation of oceanic trenches and mountain building
Context: Subduction of an oceanic plate consumes, or ______, the crust.
Volcano
Definition: A fissure in the Earth’s crust through which molten lava and gasses erupts
Context: Mount St. Helens is an______volcano in Washington State.