Test your basic knowledge |

Earth Science

Subject : science
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A waste material that contaminates air & water & or soil.






2. The weak or 'soft' zone in the upper mantle just below the lithosphere & involved in plate movement and isostatic adjustments. It lies 70 to 100 km below the surface and may extend to a depth of 400 km.






3. A rock changed from its original form and/or composition by heat & pressure &shearing stress & or chemically active fluids & or some combination of them.






4. A community of plants and/or animals and its physical environment & regarded as a unit.






5. That portion of the Earth below the crust and reaching to about 2 &780 km & where a transition zone of about 100 km thickness separates it from the core.






6. A person who makes maps.






7. A major drainage divide separating the drainage to one ocean from another.






8. Molten rock & containing dissolved gases and suspended solid particles. At the Earth's surface & magma is known as lava.






9. A flat & dry plain covered with short grass.






10. An earthquake that follows and has its epicenter near a larger earthquake.






11. A landscape that develops from the action of ground water in areas of easily soluble rocks. It is usually characterized by caves & underground drainage and sinkholes.






12. A lake of lava & usually basaltic & in a volcanic caldera.






13. The part of the crust that directly underlies the continents and continental shelves. Averages about 35 km in thickness & but may be over 70 km thick under largest mountain ranges.






14. Woodland that usually gets at least 100 inches of rain each year.






15. The amount of material a stream carries in suspension.






16. A waste material that contaminates air & water & or soil.






17. The two days of the year on which the noon sun is directly overhead at either 23.5






18. The surface between the zone of saturation and the zone of aeration.






19. The very small particles of dirt & soot & and other pollutants that are present in the air.






20. Property possessed by certain rocks of breaking with relative ease along parallel planes or nearly parallel surfaces in their crystal structures where the bonds are weakest.






21. The process of one plate descending beneath another.






22. The dust-sized & sharp-edged & glassy particles resulting from an explosive volcanic eruption.






23. A vertical conduit through the Earth's crust below a volcano & through Which magma has passed.






24. Materials that are found in nature that are useful or necessary for people to live.






25. No identifiable layers of minerals in a rock sample






26. 1. Breach in a natural levee . 2. Deep crevice or open fracture in glacier ice.






27. The pattern of water circulation from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to the ocean.






28. A ball of ice and dust & whose orbit is a long & narrow ellipse.






29. A continuous well-defined mass of material of sufficient ore content to make extraction economically feasible. compare mineral deposit.






30. Any porous and permeable rock that yields oil or natural gas.






31. The layer of gases (air) & that surrounds a planet or moon.






32. A process by which salts accumulate in soil.






33. A small ice sheet.






34. A device containing a free-swinging magnetic needle that is attracted to Earth's magnetic North Pole. Used to determine direction of travel.






35. Where one plate slides beneath another plate as the two are pushed together & a subduction zone.






36. Either the northern or southern half of the Earth as divided by the equator & or the eastern or western half as divided by a meridian.






37. The point on the Earth's surface that is directly above the focus of an earthquake.






38. 1. A mass of sand & gravel & or alluvium deposited on the bed of a stream & sea & or lake & or at the mouth of a stream 2. A unit of pressure & approximately equal to atmospheric pressure at sea level.






39. The portion of the continental margin that extends as a gently sloping surface from the shoreline seaward to a marked change in slope at the top of the continental slope . Seaward depth averages about 130 m.






40. Heat extracted from the Earth for use as an power source.






41. A comet that passed Earth in 1997 and won't return to the inner solar system until the year 4377.






42. The two days of the year on which neither hemisphere is tilted toward or away from the sun.






43. The process by which ocean floors spread laterally from crests of main ocean ridges. As material moves laterally from the ridge & new material replaces it along the ridge crest by welling upward from the mantle.






44. The attractive force between two objects; its magnitude depends on their masses and the distance between them.






45. The very slow & generally continuous downslope movement of soil and debris under the influence of gravity.






46. The relationship between distances in the area being mapped and distances in the map itself.






47. A narrow & elongate region in which one lithospheric plate descends relative to another.






48. A steep-sided rounded extrusion of highly viscous lava squeezed out from a volcano and forming a dome-shaped or bulbous mass above and around the volcanic vent. The structure generally develops inside a volcanic crater.






49. Water beneath the Earth's surface.






50. Bent rock strata.