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Vocabulary
Internal Structure Vocabulary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Lithosphere | The rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle. |
| Asthenosphere | The upper layer of the earth's mantle, below the lithosphere. |
| Magnetic Field | A region of space near a magnet, electric current, or moving charged particle in which a magnetic force acts on any other magnet, electric current, or moving charged particle. |
| Hydrosphere | All the waters on the earth's surface, such as lakes and seas, and sometimes including water over the earth's surface, such as clouds. |
| Magnetosphere | The region surrounding the earth or another astronomical body in which its magnetic field is the predominant effective magnetic field. |
| Atmosphere | The envelope of gases surrounding the earth or another planet. |
| Dynamo Effect | The dynamo effect is a geophysical theory that explains the origin of the Earth's main magnetic field in terms of a self-exciting (or self-sustaining) dynamo. |
| Continental Drift Hypothesis | The continents had once formed a single landmass, called Pangea, before breaking apart and drifting to their present locations. |
| Subduction Zone | A subduction zone is the biggest crash scene on Earth. These boundaries mark the collision between two of the planet's tectonic plates. The plates are pieces of crust that slowly move across the planet's surface over millions of years |
| Lamproites | Lamproites are ultrapotassic mantle-derived volcanic and subvolcanic rocks. |
| Transform Plate Boundaries | Neither plate is added to at the boundary, nor destroyed. |
| Divergent Plate Boundaries | Two plates are moving away from each other and new crust is forming from magma that rises to the Earth's surface between the two plates. |
| Convergent Plate Boundaries | Actively deforming region where two (or more) tectonic plates or fragments of the lithosphere move toward one another and collide. |
| Conduction | The process by which heat or electricity is directly transmitted through a substance when there is a difference of temperature or of electrical potential between adjoining regions, without movement of the material. |
| Convection | The movement caused within a fluid by the tendency of hotter and therefore less dense material to rise, and colder, denser material to sink under the influence of gravity, which consequently results in transfer of heat. |
| Radiation | the emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles, especially high-energy particles that cause ionization. |
| Plasma | Plasma is a form of matter in which many of the electron s wander around freely among the nuclei of the atom |
| Geomagnetic Reversals | A geomagnetic reversal is a change in a planet's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged, while geographic north and geographic south remain the same. |
| Coriolis Effect | On the earth, the effect tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern and is important in the formation of cyclonic weather systems. |
| Ophiolite | an igneous rock consisting largely of serpentine, believed to have been formed from the submarine eruption of oceanic crustal and upper mantle material. |
| Global Warming | a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants. |
| Plate Tectonics | a theory explaining the structure of the earth's crust and many associated phenomena as resulting from the interaction of rigid lithospheric plates that move slowly over the underlying mantle. |
| Doppler Effect | an increase (or decrease) in the frequency of sound, light, or other waves as the source and observer move toward (or away from) each other. |
| Greenhouse Effect | the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface. |
| Mantle | The region of the interior of the Earth between the core (on its inner surface) and the crust (on its outer). The mantle is more than two thousand miles thick and accounts for more than three-quarters of the volume of the Earth. |
| Seismograph | an instrument that measures and records details of earthquakes, such as force and duration. |
| Seismic Waves | an elastic wave in the earth produced by an earthquake or other means. |
| Sea-floor Spreading | the formation of new areas of oceanic crust, which occurs through the upwelling of magma at midocean ridges and its subsequent outward movement on either side. |
| Xenolith | a piece of rock within an igneous rock that is not derived from the original magma but has been introduced from elsewhere, especially the surrounding country rock. |