SES4U
SES4U – Final Exam: Review Questions
Unit 1: Earth Materials
1.
List four characteristics an Earth material should have in order to be considered a mineral.
2. What do ferromagnesian minerals have in common? Give an example.
3. How does the speed/rate of cooling influence the crystallization process?
4. The statements below relate to terms describing igneous rock textures. For each statement, identify
the appropriate term.
a. Holes produced by escaping gas.
b. Texture exhibited by obsidian.
c. Crystals too small to be seen with the naked eye.
d. A texture characterized by two distinctly different crystal sizes.
e. Coarse-grained, with crystals of roughly equal size.
5. How does mechanical weathering add to the effectiveness of chemical weathering?
6. What is the primary basis for distinguishing among various clastic sedimentary rocks?
7. What is the difference between conglomerate and breccia?
8. List three environments of deposition and state the size of particle is most likely to be deposited.
9. What is metamorphism? What are the agents that change rocks?
10. Distinguish between contact metamorphism and regional metamorphism. Which creates the greatest
quantity of metamorphic rock?
11. What is the difference between a sill and a dike?
12. How does coal form?
13. How does water influence metamorphism?
Unit 2: Plate Tectonics
14. How does lava/magma viscosity affect volcano explosiveness?
15. What is the difference between:
a. Caldera and crater
b. Shield volcano and stratovolcano
c. Pahoehoe and Aa
d. Intraplate and interplate volcanism
16. Why is it more concerning to live near a fault that has not experienced an earthquake for 200 years
rather than near one that has very recently caused a major earthquake?
17. What are three differences between P and S waves?
18. What are three differences between a tsunami and a wind-driven wave?
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19. What are two scales of earthquake measurement? What do they measure?
20. Earthquake A has magnitude 8.0, that of quake B is 6.0. What is the difference in:
a. Energy released?
b. Amplitude?
21. Why are some Hawaiian Islands older than others?
22. What is a subduction zone? With what type of plate boundary is it associated?
23. What evidence is there of seafloor spreading?
24. What is a difference between the theory of continental drift and the theory of plate tectonics?
25. Why is the oldest oceanic lithosphere not as old as some continental rock?
26. What is the difference between:
a. Aquitard and aquifer
b. Permeable materials and porous material
c. Gaining stream and losing stream
d. Water table and perched water table
27. How are limestone caves and sinkholes related?
28. What is a moraine? List the three types of moraines
29. What is the difference between an accumulation zone and an ablation zone?
30. What is the difference between glacial quarrying and striation formation?
Unit 3: Geologic Time
31. What is an unconformity?
32. What is the Principal of Original Horizontality?
33. How are index fossils used to date a rock sample?
34. What is the difference between numerical dating and relative dating?
35. If the half life of an element is 50 years. If a rock sample originally contains 200g of a the element
and currently has only 25g remaining, how old is the rock?
Unit 4: Astronomy
36. Consider two stars, Alpha and Beta. Alpha has hotter surface temperature. One has a bluish colour,
the other redish.
a. Which is blue, which is red?
b. Sketch a Wein’s law plot of both stars (y-axis = intensity, x-axis= wavelength)
37. Consider a blue versus yellow light.
a. Which has longer wavelength?
b. Which as higher frequency?
c. Which has greater speed through a vacuum?
d. Sketch the two by representing them as waves.
38. Make the following unit conversions.
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a. 0.00010 º = _________ arcsecs
b. 0.50 arcmins = _______ º
39. Calculate the following:
a. Distance to Vega, having a parallax of 0.128 arcsecs.
b. Parallax of Capella, having with a distance of 42 lyrs from Earth?
40. The star, Betelgeuse is one of the largest visible stars, red, and emits enormous amounts of light.
a. Why is this star not especially bright?
b. What type of star is it likely to be? (i.e. intermediate mass main sequence, high mass main
sequence, low mass main sequence, red giant, supergiant, or white dwarf).
c. Would you expect its luminosity to be high or low?
d. What area of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram is this data point likely to be located.
41. What is the difference between the observable universe and the actual universe?
42. What is meant by red shifting and what causes it?
43. What evidence exists for the Big Bang theory of universe origin?
44. What did Olber’s paradox suggest about the age of the size and age of the universe?
Unit 5: Planetary Science
45. Use a diagram to explain the following:
a. Geocentric Model
b. Annular solar eclipse
c. Waxing crescent
d. Partial solar eclipse
46. Give evidence that:
a. The earth is spherical
b. The earth is revolving
47. What is the name given to the day when there are equal amounts of daylight and darkness on all
parts of the planet.
48. Calculate the average distance to the sun of a planet in AUs if it takes 24 yrs to make one orbit. (Hint:
p2 = a3)
49. How do we know that some planets have a liquid core, while others do not?
50. Why are all planets orbiting in the same direction?
51. Why is the Earth’s core so hot?
52. Imagine you have a scale model of the solar system. In your model, the Earth is 2.5 cm in diameter
while it’s actual diameter is 12,700 km. How big should you make Jupiter if its actual size is
142,984 km?
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Diagrams: Two of the following will be required on the exam
1. Planetary orbits
o Shape of orbit
o Location in orbit when moving
fastest/slowest
o Perihelion
o
o
o
o
Aphelion
Semi-major axis
Position of sun
Focal points
2. Solar Eclipse (should also know Lunar eclipse)
o Draw so that that the season is evident (ex/ show that it is winter in Toronto)
o Draw the position of the sun during a total solar eclipse.
o Show the area on the Earth that experiences the eclipse
o Show that the time in Toronto is 12:00 noon.
3. Rock Cycle
o Show the transformations between all three major classes of rock (sedimentary, igneous,
metamorphic).
4. Rock formation
o Pluton
o Volcano
o Diapir
o Bathlolith
o Sill
o Region of contact metamorphism
5. Groundwater
o Main water table
o Zone of aeration
o Zone of saturation
o Perched water table
o Spring
o Losing stream
o Functional well
6. Plate boundaries (may be one or more of the following plate boundaries in one diagram: C-C
convergent, C-C divergent, O-O convergent, O-O divergent, O-C convergent) Depending on the
boundary chosen, some of the following may be included:
o Subduction zone
o Volcano
o Trench
o Area of magma formation
o Ridge
o Volcanic island
o Area of new lithosphere formation
o Others
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7. Intraplate volcanism
o Magma source
o Older island
o Newer island
o Active volcano
o Extinct volcano
o Direction of plate movement