Planet Earth: Going Further
Reading rock, evidence and deep time rather than naming the three types.
8 questions, free, marked as you go with a worked explanation on every one.
What this covers
- rocks and the rock cycle
The questions
- A road cut near Canmore shows flat layers of sandstone with a layer of shale in the middle. Higher up, the same layers are tilted at 40 degrees. What is the best reading of that outcrop?
- In an undisturbed sequence of sedimentary rock, a fossil trilobite is found 40 m below a fossil fern. What can you conclude?
- Which of these are ways that mechanical weathering — breaking rock without changing what it is made of — happens in Alberta? Select all that apply.
- A river deposits sediment on its delta at an average of 2.5 mm each year. How many years does it take to build a layer 4 metres thick?
- Granite and basalt are both igneous, but granite has large visible crystals and basalt has tiny ones. What does the crystal size tell you?
- A rock sample has a mass of 148 g and displaces 56 cm3 of water. What is its density, in grams per cubic centimetre, to one decimal place?
- An unconformity is a surface in the rock record where layers are missing. What does one tell a geologist?
- A student claims a rock is sedimentary. Which observations would support that claim? Select all that apply.