How old are you? To you, your lifespan probably seems like a large amount of time. The span of just ten years seems like an eternity. As your grow older, time seems to pass more quickly. Consider your grandparents. How old are they? How long ago where your great-grandparents born? Looking way back into […]

  Metamorphic rocks form deep within the Earth, when heat and pressure are applied to either igneous rocks, or sedimentary rocks. This heat, and pressure in essence cooks the rocks, changing their structure substantially. The rocks are partially melted, and the chemicals within them are rearranged, so that the final rock is very different than […]

Over the course of millions of years, the igneous rocks are weathered down by forces of wind and water. Fine particles of dirt begin to cover the landscape. Often, these small rock particles end up being suspended in water, and find their way to the bottom of lakes, streams, and the ocean. Slowly, the layer […]

  All rocks on Earth were initially igneous in nature. Igneous rocks form as liquid magma cools, forming crystal structured rocks. There are many different types of igneous rocks. Igneous rocks that form deep within the Earth’s crust were temperatures are very high, might take thousands of years to cool down. This causes the crystals […]

  If you were planning to back a pie, what ingredients would you use for the crust? The ingredients used to make the Earth’s crust are complex. The basic ingredients are known as elements. There are 90 known elements that exist in the Earth’s crust. These elements combine with one another in a number of […]

  Because soils develop under a variety of conditions, the soil in one location can be very different from the soil in another location. In order to understand soil, and how one soil differs from another, geologists look at and measure the soils properties. Soil Color The most obvious property when looking at soil is […]

Soil is made up of an extensive variety of substances, minerals, and rocks. These substances can be categorized into four main groups. These groups are organic materials, inorganic materials, air, and water. Organic Materials In Soil Organic matter makes up only a small fraction of the total materials in soil, yet it is extremely important. […]

  Geologists examine the characteristics of the lithosphere, or surface of the Earth, and try to understand the processes that formed it, and that continue to shape it today. Lets begin our study of the Earth’s lithosphere by examining the portion of it that we are most familiar with, the soil. Soil is found on […]