Unit 1:
1. What is the name of the first National Park?
A. Sequoia National Park
B. Biscayne Nation Park
C. Yellowstone National Park
D. The Grand Canyon
Statement: “The idea of a National Park—taking the really choice pieces of the country and placing them under
public control—is a US idea, developed by the Washburn expedition to Yellowstone in 1870 and eventually enacted
by Congress in 1872. Since then, the idea of national parks has spread across the nation and worldwide. This is
surely one of the great ideas of the modern world, to save key scenic environments in the public domain.”
2. “Science is the best way we have to answer many questions.”
Is this statement:
A. True
B. False
Statement: “Science differs from other human endeavors in that its disputes are appealed to nature. In art, you
cannot judge whether Picasso or Rembrandt was a “better” painter. You can study the brush work, perspective,
social context, or whatever, and learn a tremendous amount about art from the discussion, but you cannot reach an
objective decision on who is better. But if asked whether Aristotle’s or Newton’s physics work better, we can
answer the question.”
3. How old is Earth?
A. 4.6 million years old
B. We don’t know
C. About 3 billion years old
D. 4.6 billion years old
Statement: “We believe that the universe started in a “Big Bang” about 14 billion years ago. The Earth is “only”
about 4.6 billion years old.”
4. How was Sun formed?
A. It was drawn with crayons.
B. Stars that exploded generated gas and dust, this went to form the sun.
C. Condensation.
D. It was manmade.
Statement: “There were some stars, and they exploded and generated gases and dust, and something caused that gas
and dust cloud to be compressed a little. Once the dust and gas started falling together, gravity took over.
Eventually, most of the mass went to form the sun.”
5. How were Earth formed?
A. Heat melted the other planets, the liquid that dripped came together to form earth.
B. Its always been here.
C. Falling together of chunks.
D. Layers formed after thousands of years, kind of like an onion but with the end product being Earth.
Statement: “Assembly of the Earth involved falling together of lots of big and little chunks. The largest chunk was
probably about the size of Mars.”
Unit 2:
6. What is most of Earth’s heat made by?
A. Decay of natural radioactive atoms in rocks.
B. The Sun
C. All of the hair dryers in the world being put to use at the same time.
D. Lava
Statement: “Most of the Earth’s heat comes from this radioactive decay, although some heat is left over from when
the Earth formed, or is being released as the core freezes, or the core, mantle, and crust continue to separate and
things sink and give up heat from friction. “
7. What are P or push waves?
A. Waves that occur in the ocean when there are strong winds.
B. A wave that pushes leaves across the ground.
C. Normal sound waves that go through solid, liquid, gas.
D. Slower waves that don’t go through liquids.
Statement: “The P-wave is the ordinary sound wave. It represents a push-pull in the direction the wave is moving.”
8. What are S or shear waves?
A. Waves that only move south
B. Slower waves that don’t go through liquids.
C. A non-visible wave because its shear, duh.
D. Normal sound waves that go through solid, liquid, gas.
Statement: “An S-wave moves slower than the corresponding P-wave. S-waves don’t travel through liquids at all.”
9. We know that earthquake damages can be huge, it was said that the worst earthquake killed about 8,000 people in
China. Is this true or false?
A. True
B. False
Statement: “Seventeen quakes are estimated to have killed more than 50,000 people each, and the worst, in Shaanxi,
China in 1556, is estimated to have killed over 800,000.”
10. What is the break between the two batches of rocks called?
A. A gap
B. A break
C. A crack
D. A fault, or an earthquake fault.
Statement: “The break separating the different parts is called the San Andreas Fault. The forces that move the rocks
are huge and applied over large areas, so that far from the fault the motion is smooth.”
Unit 3:
11. Where is the sea floor lost?
A. Where it sinks back into the mantle at Obduction Zones.
B. Where there is water.
C. Where it sinks back into the mantle at Subduction Zones.
D. Where there is a lot of wind that blows it away.
Statement: “When sea floor becomes cold and dense enough, it can sink back into the mantle, and we call the place
where it sinks a “subduction zone”. The sinking sea-floor slab drags along a little sediment and water, warms up
and melts a little of the slab and some of the sediment, and feeds the volcanic arcs.”
12. How soon can you figure out when an eruption will occur if you are trying to predict a volcano?
A. At least a month before
B. Weeks before
C. Days or hours before
D. One year before
Statement: “With sufficient care, volcanic eruptions can be predicted with some confidence. Volcanoes usually give
off many signals before an eruption: the ground swells as magma moves up; the moving magma and the swelling
ground create earthquakes and especially the distinctive harmonic tremors of fluid flowing in a pipe; small eruptions
occur; gaseous emissions increase as the magma nears the surface and then cease if the system becomes plugged and
builds up pressure for an explosion. A monitoring program of seismographs to detect earthquakes, repeat surveying
of laser reflectors set on the mountain to watch for deformation patterns, gas sampling, and perhaps photographic or
other sensors to watch for landslides, can track a volcano’s behavior and allow timely warning.
13. What does a new hotspot look like?
A. A flower
B. A mushroom
C. A tree
D. A hole
Statement: “When a new hot-spot first rises from below, the top must push through the mantle and crust, and the
resistance of the stuff in the way of the rising column causes its top to spread out like the head of a thunderhead, or
of a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb, or of a blob in a lava lamp, and for the same reasons.”
14. Yellowstone's lava is modified coming through the crust so that more silica is erupted than for Hawaii.
A. True
B. False
Statement: “Yellowstone also a hot spot; the head of Yellowstone hot spot covered eastern Washington and Oregon
with basalt, but Yellowstone's lava is modified coming through the crust so that more silica is erupted than for
Hawaii”
15. In melted rock what tries to polymerize to make lumps?
A. Lava
B. Silicon and oxygen
C. Silicon
D. Oxygen
Statement: “Silicon and oxygen get together in melt to form the material we call silica. Left to itself, each silicon
atom will be surrounded by four oxygen atoms, which form a tetrahedron (a little pyramid). But, give them a little
time, and the tetrahedra will start sticking together, or polymerizing, into chains and sheets and bigger clumps, with
some oxygens serving in more than one tetrahedron. “
Unit 4:
16. What happens when continents run into each other?
A. Obduction
B. Subduction
C. Combining
D. Crashing
Statement: “The key to most of this is that you can sink old, cold sea floor, but you can’t sink a continent. Island
arcs and continents float on the mantle too well. So rather than going down the subduction zone with the oceanic
lithosphere, the island arc or continent rides across the subduction zone for a major collision. In such a collision,
called obduction, layers of rock are bent into folds.
17. Most tsunamis tiny, but can run up on land to elevations above ________ feet.
A. 10
B. 100
C. 1,000
D. 10,000
Statement: One of the highest tsunamis noted were, “On the flanks of many of the Hawaiian Islands, including
Lanai, Molokai, and Maui, to at least 1,600 feet (500 m) in elevation.”
18. What does bobbing-up of eroding mountains bring to the surface?
A. Shells
B. Rocks
C. Bones
D. Wood
Statement: “As folding and faulting pushed up the mountains farther west, and as erosion of those peaks allowed
“bobbing up” of their thickened deep root, the sedimentary rock layers were tilted (see the figure below), so you
actually will be driving into older and older rocks as you go.”
19. Heating and squeezing turns sedimentary rocks or igneous rocks into metamorphic rocks.
A. True
B. False
Statement: “Erosion has removed the younger rocks on top, exposing old igneous and metamorphic rocks in the
center of the mountain range. Younger sedimentary rocks were tipped up along the sides of the mountains, and can
be seen by tourists driving west toward the national park.”
20. Which accurately matches its definition of tectonic styles?
A. Push-Together: subduction
B. Pull-Apart: rifting/spreading/sea-floor-production
C. Slide-Past: faulting
D. All of the above are correct
Statement: “pull-apart (Death Valley, spreading ridges); push-together (Crater Lake and Mt. St. Helens subduction,
State College and the Great Smokies obduction); and slide-past (the San Andreas Fault in California). Pull-apart
behavior involves stretching of rocks until they break, forming pull-apart or gravity faults (after being pulled apart,
gravity pulls one block down past the other). Pull-apart action occurs at the spreading centers, probably where the
convection cells deeper in the mantle spread apart. Push-together behavior occurs at subduction and obduction
zones, and produces squeeze-together folds and faults, with the faults also known as thrust faults. Slide-past
boundaries, also called transform faults, occur where two large blocks of rock move past each other but not toward
or away from each other. Slide-past motion produces earthquakes without mountain ranges.”
Unit 5:
21. What gets most of the Sun’s energy?
A. Everywhere gets an equal amount of energy
B. The equator
C. The Sun doesn’t give off energy
D. Wherever the Sun feels like shining on a particular day
Statement: “On Earth, the equator receives more sunshine than the poles. Some of the energy reaching the Earth is
reflected back to space from clouds or snow and ice, especially near the poles. Much more sunshine is absorbed to
heat the Earth at the equator than at the poles.”
22. Physical weathering is caused by:
A. Water dissolving something.
B. Salt eating away at something.
C. Crystal growth in cracks.
D. Growth of rocks.
Statement: “The mineral thenardite, Na2SO4 can add much water to its structure, expanding in the process. If
thenardite exists in an environment that alternately is wetted and dried, the resulting expansion and contraction from
adding and losing water may break the rocks around it. Increased humidity will cause the mineral to rearrange and
take up water, expanding and wedging open cracks. Continued wetting may dissolve the mineral, which will move
deeper in the crack in the rock and then be redeposited and dehydrated during a subsequent dry time. Then further
wetting will cause re-expansion and more wedging. “
23. What is mass movement?
A. Movement of a large mass.
B. The downhill transport of soil and rock without rivers or glaciers or wind.
C. The downhill transport of soil and rock with rivers or glaciers or wind.
D. The uphill transport of soil and rock without rivers or glaciers or wind.
Statement: “Mass movement is the name give to the downhill motion of rock, soil, debris, or other material,
provided the flow is not primarily water (if material is washed along by a river, we call it a river), or a glacier or
wind.”
24. Rising air is compressed, which cools the air; sinking air expands, which warms the air.
A. True
B. False
Statement: “When air moves up, it expands, which requires that work is done in pushing away other air to make
room for the expansion. The work requires energy, which comes from the heat energy in the air, so the rising air
cools. Similarly, when air moves down, it contracts as the surrounding, higher-pressure air squeezes the sinking air
parcel, and this squeezing is work that is done on the sinking parcel, and warms the parcel.”
25. What does chemical weathering do to quartz?
A. Dissolves it
B. Washes it away
C. Changes it to granite
D. Leaves it the way it is
Statement: “Most of the quartz (silica as a mineral) sits there almost unchanged as quartz sand (a little of it may
dissolve and wash away, but most stays).”