Year 9 Changing Earth - Extra Stuff

Science as a Human Endeavour

Science Investigations

Reading Resilience

Extenshun

Volcanic Ash and Airlines

Measuring the Speed of Tectonic Plates

Development of the Geological Timescale

Earthquake-proofing Buildings

Supercontinents

Volcano Exploration Robots

Subduction Zones and Ophiolite Belts

Supervolcanoes

Historic Earthquakes

Magnetic Striping Simulation

Mantle Convection Simulation

Build a Model Volcano

Hotspot Simulation

Build a Seismometer

Build a Geological Timescale

Copy across from Year 8 Rocks

References

Lake Taupo

Lake Toba

Yellowstone

Ancient supervolcanoes along the Cosgrove hotspot track

Pioneered in NZ!

Iceland eruption of 2010

Exploring the effects of ash on machinery and living things

What is ash?

Effects on planes

Effects on people

How was it handled?

What happened?

How is it done?

Lasers

Satellites

Applications

How was it done?

Radiometric dating (absolute)

Divisions of the timescale

Eons (e.g. Proterozoic)

Eras (e.g. Cenozoic)

Periods (e.g. Quaternary)

Epochs (e.g. Holocene)

Mention the 'Anthropocene' and the theory that humans are beginning to affect the world's geology!

How do we know what ancient supercontinents looked like?

Mapping using fossil distributions

Mesosaurus fossils have been found on both sides of the Atlantic, helping to reconstruct Gondwanaland

Trilobite fossils have been used to mark out the boundaries of ancient
continents - could refer to Richard Fortey's book!

Mapping using glacial evidence

History of Pangaea

Earlier supercontinents

Ur

Rodinia

Hypothesised by Wegener

All major landmasses joined together during the Carboniferous Period

Widespread rifting took place as Pangaea began to break apart in the Triassic Period

'Pangaea' = 'all lands'

Part of his continental drift theory

Formation and breakup explained by plate tectonics

Link back to relevant Science Understanding lessons

Existed during the 'Snowball Earth' period

Earliest known supercontinent; formed around 3.6 billion years ago

Anatomy of a subduction zone

Accretionary wedge

Island arc

Assume oceanic crust subducts under continental crust

Layers of oceanic crust correspond to layers in an ophiolite belt

Ophiolite case studies

NZ - Dun Mountain Belt

Cyprus - Troodos Ophiolite

Dunite (olivine-rich rock) characteristic of this belt

Associated with economic deposits of copper

How subduction happens

Also pioneered in NZ!

References

'A Continent on the Move' page 13

Known ophiolites formed at times of supercontinent break-up when widespread subduction took place

Where'd the cool names come from?

Relative dating

Rock strata

Fossils

Forams

Radiolaria

Ammonites

Vertebrates - dinosaurs, mammoths, cool junk

Early divisions: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Quaternary

Valdivia - 1960

Japan - 2011

Newcastle (NSW) - 1989

Highest Richter magnitude ever recorded (9.5)

Generated a massive tsunami

Thought to have ejected 2800 km^3 of magma!

Associated with the breakup of Gondwana

Threw material (including zircons) all the way from northern Queensland to WA!

Known to have generated pumice, ignimbrite and pyroclastic flows

Contained around 530 km^3 of magma

History of exploring volcanoes

Use quotes from NASA article

Spotlight on Carolyn Parcheta, postdoctoral fellow based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab

What have we learned so far?

What do scientists hope to achieve with these robots?

Records of Mt Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD

Finding volcanoes on the ocean floor

Volcanoes in spaaaaaaace!

Why use robots?