Semester Study Guide
Directions: Write the number and answers in your notebook for full credit.
Words in bold are vocabulary words you should know how to define.
Minerals
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What is a mineral?
What is the difference between silicates and nonsilicates.
What are the eight ways to identify minerals? Describe each.
Of the eight ways to identify minerals, which is the least helpful? Explain.
What is the difference between an element and a compound?
Rocks
6. What are the three types of rocks? Explain how each is made.
7. What are the two types of igneous rocks? Explain the differences.
8. What are strata (stratification) of a sedimentary rock?
9. What are the three types of sedimentary rock? Explain the differences.
10. What does the word metamorphic mean?
11. Which is the only type of rock than can have fossils in it? Why not the others?
12. What are the two types of metamorphism? Explain the differences.
13. What are the two types of metamorphic rock? Explain the differences.
Energy Resources
14. What is the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources?
15. Give four examples of renewable and nonrenewable resources.
16. How can we help conserve our nonrenewable resources?
17. What type of renewable resource would be the most abundant in the desert?
Plate Tectonics
18. What are the three physical layers of the Earth? Describe each.
19. What are the five compositional layers of the Earth? Put them in order outer to inner
and describe each.
20. What happens to temperature and pressure as you travel to the center of the Earth?
21. What are the two types of crust? Explain differences.
22. What are tectonic plates?
23. What are the nine major tectonic plates?
24. What are the three types of boundaries? Describe and give a location of each. Also,
what landforms do each create?
25. What is a subduction zone? Where does it occur?
26. What is sea-floor spreading?
27. What are the three types of folds? Describe or draw a picture of each.
28. What are the three types of faults? Describe or draw a picture of each.
29. What are the three types of mountains? Explain differences.
30. What is the different between continental drift theory and plate tectonics theory?
31. List three pieces of evidences that proved continental drift theory.
32. What is Pangaea?
33. What are the three types of plate movement? Describe each.
Earthquakes
34. Where do earthquakes occur?
35. What are the three types of seismic waves? List the waves, their name, what type of
materials they can travel through, general speed and what kind of seismic wave (body or
surface).
36. What can seismic waves tell us about earthquakes and the Earth?
37. What is the safest thing you should do in an earthquake?
38. What is the S-P Time Method used for? Explain.
Volcanoes
39. Where do volcanoes form?
40. Explain how violent and quiet eruptions occur in terms of gasses trapped, silica,
viscosity and the type of magma/lava produced.
41. Describe the three types of volcanoes in terms of shape, how it formed, type of eruption
and lava.
42. Describe the crater, vent, and magma chamber of a volcano.
Weathering and Soil Formation
43. What is abrasion? What causes it?
44. What is mechanical weathering? Give six ways this occurs.
45. What is chemical weathering? Give four ways this occurs.
46. What is soil?
47. What are the four soil horizons? Describe each.
48. What is bedrock?