Social Studies Notes
1. core: made out of iron and nickel
2. crust: thin layer of rock at the earth's surface
: Layer of gasses surrounding the earth
4. hydrosphere: made of water elements of earth .
5. continental drift: hypothesis that all continents were once joined into a supercontinent that split apart over millions of years .
6. Pangaea: supercontinent that slowly drifted apart for millions of years .
7. prairie: large level area of grassland with few or no trees
8. Butte: A raised, flat area of land with steep cliffs, smaller than a mesa .
9. Mesa: a wide flat topped mountain with steep sides, larger than a butte
10. canyon: a canyon is a narrow deep valley with steep sides
11. plateau: a broad flat area of land higher than the surrounding land .
12. Cliff: steep, almost vertical edge of a hill, mountain or plain .
13. Peninsula: is a piece of land that has water on ONLY 3 sides and attached to another piece of land .
14. strait: a narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water .
15. isthmus: a thin strip of land that joins two larger bodies of land .
16. glacier: a large ice mass that moves slowly down a mountain or over land
17. swamp: lowland region that is saturated with water .
18. desert: a hot dry place with little or no rainfall (Less than 10% a year)
19. oasis: a spot of fertile land in a desert fed by water from wells or underground springs
20. delta: a triangular area of land formed from deposit at the mouth of the river .
21. steppe: wide treeless grassy plain in Europe & Asia & Africa .
22. Savanna: grassland in Africa .
23. Marsh: soft, wet, low-lying grassy land serves as a transition between water and land
24. Cataract: step like series of waterfalls.
25. Relief: difference in elevation of a landform from its lowest point to its highest point:.
-mountain
-hills
-plains
-plateaus
26. Topography: the combined characteristics of landforms & their distribution in a region
27. why do earthquakes happen?: -although the ground we walk on seems solid the earth is actually make of huge pieces of flat rock called tectonic plates
- these move very slowly, and where they meet called a fault
-when plates rub together the movement forces waves of energy
28. tectonic plates: enormous moving pieces of the earth lithospere
29. fault: fracture in the earth's crust
30. There's a 0.618% changes of a major earthquake happening
31. seismograph: device used to measure the strength of an earthquake
32. epicenter: where a earthquake starts on the surface
34. richter scale: a number system of measuring an earthquake
35. tsunami: a giant wave caused by an earthquake
36. volcano: creaks in the earth's crust where magma flows out
37. lava: magma that has reached the earth's surface
38. ring of fire: a zone around the rim of the pacific ocean where most volcanoes are located
39. San andreas fault: the reason California has so many earthquakes
40. weathering: the physical and chemical process that changes characteristics of rocks
41. sediment: mud, sand, or silt caused by weathering
42. mechanical weathering: process that breaks rocks into smaller rocks near the earth's surface
43. Erosion: occurs when weathered material is moved by the action of wind, water, ice, or gravity
44. Water erosion: can take place in streams & rivers as well as coastlines
45. Wind erosion: winds can move and deposit sediment to other locations. can carry as much as 6000 tons of sediment
46. Loess: yellow soil located in china
47. glacial erosion: erosion can occur because of glaciers. gravity causes glaciers to move downhill very slowly
48. Glaciation: changing of landforms by slowly moving glaciers