3 Layers of Earth

Crust - The Earth's Crust is like the skin of an apple. It is very thin in comparison to the
other three layers. The crust is only about 3-5 miles (8 kilometers) thick under the
oceans(oceanic crust) and about 25 miles (32 kilometers) thick under the continents
(continental crust).

Mantle - The mantle is a part of a terrestrial planet or other rocky body large enough to
have differentiation by density. The interior of the Earth, similar to the other terrestrial
planets, is chemically divided into layers. The mantle is a highly viscous layer between
the crust and the outer core.

Core Seismic measurements show that the core is divided into two parts, a solid inner
core with a radius of ~1,220 km[2] and a liquid outer core extending beyond it to a radius
of ~3,400 km.

2 Types of Core

Inner Core - The inner core of the Earth, its innermost part, is a primarily solidball with
a radius of about 1,220 km (760 mi), according toseismological studies.[1][2] (This is about
70% of the length of the Moon's radius.) It is believed to consist primarily of an iron
nickel alloy, and to be about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun:
approximately 5700 K (5430 C).

Outer Core - The outer core of the Earth is a liquid layer about 2,266 km (1,408 mi)
thick composed of iron and nickel which lies above the Earth's solid inner core and
below its mantle. Its outer boundary lies 2,890 km (1,800 mi) beneath the Earth's
surface. The transition between the inner core and outer core is located approximately
5,150 km (3,200 mi) beneath the Earth's surface.
2 Types of Mantle

Asthenosphere - The asthenosphere is the highly viscous, mechanically

weak and ductilely-deforming region of the upper mantle of the Earth. It lies below
the lithosphere, at depths between 100 and 200 km (~ 62 and 124 miles) below the
surface, but perhaps extending as deep as 700 km (430 mi). It is considered the source
region of mid-ocean ridge basalt.

Mesosphere - The mesosphere is the layer of the Earth's atmosphere that is directly
above the stratosphere and directly below the thermosphere. In the mesosphere
temperature decreases with increasing height.

Mohorovicic Discontinuity or Moho

The Mohorovii discontinuity , usually referred to as the Moho, is the boundary between
the Earth's crust and the mantle. Named after the pioneering Croatian seismologist Andrija
Mohorovii, the Moho separates both the oceanic crust and continental crust from underlying
mantle. The Moho mostly lies entirely within thelithosphere; only beneath mid-ocean
ridges does it define the lithosphere asthenosphere boundary. The Mohorovii discontinuity
was first identified in 1909 by Mohorovii, when he observed that seismograms from shallow-
focus earthquakes had two sets of P-waves and S-waves, one that followed a direct path near
the Earth's surface and the other refracted by a high velocity medium.
Formation of Land Forms

Mt. Everest - is the Earth's highest mountain, with a peak at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft)
above sea level and the 5th tallest mountain measured from the centre of the Earth.[10] It
is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international border
between China andNepal runs across the precise summit point. Its massif includes
neighboring peaks Lhotse, 8,516 m (27,940 ft); Nuptse, 7,855 m (25,771 ft)
and Changtse, 7,580 m (24,870 ft).

Marianas Trench - is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the
western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about 2,550
kilometres (1,580 mi) long but has an average width of only 69 kilometres (43 mi). It
reaches a maximum-known depth of 10.911 km (10,911 40 m) or 6.831 mi (36,069
131 ft) at the Challenger Deep, a small slot-shaped valley in its floor, at its southern
end,[2] although some unrepeated measurements place the deepest portion at 11.03
kilometres (6.85 mi)
Theories

Geologist - A geologist is a scientist who studies

the solid and liquid matter that constitutes
the Earth as well as the processes and history that
has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in
studyinggeology. Geologists, studying more of an
applied science than a theoretical one, must
approach Geology
using physics, chemistry and biology as well as
other sciences. Geologists, compared to scientists
engaged in other fields, are generally more
exposed to the outdoors than staying in
laboratories; although some geologists prefer to
perform most of their studies in the lab.

Continental Drift Hypothesis - Although the

"continental drift" hypothesis was proposed by a
German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener in
1910, he was not the first to notice that the coasts
of Africa and South America seem to fit together.
The Hypothesis is Based on an apparent fit
between Africa and South America,Wegener
hypothesized that at one time all continents were
joined together in a "supercontinent" called
Pangaea. The supercontinent eventually broke into
the smaller continents, which then "drifted" towards
their present positions. Wegener supported his
hypothesis by using circumstantial
evidence, similar to the way that a detective would
collect evidence to solve a crime.

Mantle Convection Hypothesis - Hot mantle magma

moves upward at divergent boundaries bulging the
crust and causing it to move away from the
divergence. The moving plates then get pushed
together somewhere else and one plate dives
under the other causing subduction.
Flow Through Convection A convective flow is the motion of a fluid due to differences in
density These differences in density commonly occur due to temperature gradients. For
example the circulating air flow in a room with a hot radiator

Convection in the Mantle is the slow creeping motion of Earth's rocky mantle caused
by convection currents carrying heat from the interior of the Earth to the surface. The Earth's
surface lithosphere, which rides atop the asthenosphere (the two components of the upper
mantle), is divided into a number of plates that are continuously being created and consumed at
their opposite plate boundaries.

Contraction Theory - In the early 20th century the prevailing wisdom regarding how mountain
belts were formed and why the sea is deep was that the Earth started out as a molten blob and
gradually cooled. When it cooled, heavier metals such as iron sank down and formed the core,
while lighter metals such as aluminum stayed up in the crust. The cooling also caused
contraction and the pressure produced by contract caused some parts of the crust to buckle
upwards, forming mountains. Other parts of the crust buckled downwards, creating ocean
basins. Picture in your mind a grape turning into a raisin as it dries out.
 Crustal Plates of Earth Crustal plates form the
outer layer of the Earth. There are seven major
plates and many smaller plates. These tectonic
plates are formed from the Earth's crust and
uppermost part of the mantle. There are two types
of tectonic plates. Continental plates are made
primarily of granitic rocks and are much thicker and
older. Oceanic plates are thinner and younger.
Together these plates form the lithosphere.

Wengers Theory of Plate Tectonics Alfred

Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift at
the beginning of the 20th century. His idea was that
the Earth's continents were once joined together,
but gradually moved apart over millions of years. It
offered an explanation of the existence of
similar fossils and rocks on continents that are far
apart from each other. But it took a long time for the
idea to become accepted by other scientists.

Lithosphere - The lithosphere is the rigid

outermost shell of a rocky planet. On Earth, it
comprises the crust and the portion of the
upper mantle that behaves elastically on time
scales of thousands of years or greater. the
lithosphere includes the crust and the uppermost
mantle, which constitute the hard and rigid outer
layer of the Earth. The lithosphere is underlain by
the asthenosphere, the weaker, hotter, and deeper
part of the upper mantle. The boundary between
the lithosphere and the underlying asthenosphere
is defined by a difference in response to stress
 Asthenosphere - The asthenosphere is the highly
viscous, mechanically weak and ductilely-deforming
region of the upper mantle of the Earth. It lies below
the lithosphere, at depths between 100 and 200 km
(~ 62 and 124 miles) below the surface, but
perhaps extending as deep as 700 km (430 mi). It
is considered the source region of mid-ocean ridge
basalt.

Converge Convergence theory holds that as

national boundaries are eroded in the political,
technological and business arenas, so too local
differences in culture will be eroded, with the end
result being one global culture.

Diverge Divergence theory maintains the

opposite, namely that cultural diversity will persist
or even be reinforced by the rejection of superficial
commonality. Each view has implications for
Human Resource Management (HRM) insofar as
HRM concerns the management of culture.
 Transform - A transform fault or transform
boundary, also known as conservative plate
boundary since these faults neither create nor
destroy lithosphere, is a type of fault whose
relativemotion is predominantly horizontal in
either sinistral or dextral direction. Furthermore,
transform faults end abruptly and are connected on
both ends to other faults, ridges, or subduction
zones.[1] While most transform faults are hidden in
the deep oceans where they form a series of
short zigzags accommodating seafloor
spreading (see graphic at right), the best-known
(and most destructive) are those on land at the
margins of tectonic plates.

Plate Tectonics - is a scientific theory that

describes the large-scale motions
of Earth's lithosphere. The model builds on the
concepts of continental drift, developed during the
first decades of the 20th century. It was accepted
by the geoscientific community after the concepts
of seafloor spreading were developed in the late
1950s and early 1960s.
Forces

Folding Wave A layered rock that exhibits bends

is said to be folded. The layered rock was at one
time uniformly straight but was stressed to develop
a series of arches and troughs. A compressive
stress compacts horizontal rock layers and forces
them to bend vertically, forming fold patterns.

Anticline A fold of rock layers that slope

downward on both sides of a common crest.
Anticlines form when rocks are compressed by
plate-tectonic forces. They can be as small as a hill
or as large as a mountain range.

Syncline A fold of rock layers that slope upward

on both sides of a common low point. Synclines
form when rocks are compressed by plate-tectonic
forces. They can be as small as the side of a cliff or
as large as an entire valley.
 Fault A fault is a crack in the Earth's crust.
Typically, faults are associated with, or form, the
boundaries betweenEarth's tectonic plates. In an
active fault, the pieces of the Earth's crust along a
fault move over time. The moving rocks can
cause earthquakes. Inactive faults had movement
along them at one time, but no longer move. The
type of motion along a fault depends on the type of
fault.

Uplift Uplift is the process by which the earth's

surface slowly rises either due to increasing
upward force applied from below or decreasing
downward force (weight) from above. During uplift,
land, as well as the sea floor, rises. The outer shell
of the earth, the crust, divides into moving sections
called plates. Uplift, forming mountains and
plateaus, usually results as these plates crash into
each other over millions of years.

Subsidence - Subsidence is the motion of a

surface (usually, the Earth's surface) as it shifts
downward relative to a datum such as sea-level.
The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results
in an increase inelevation. Ground subsidence is of
concern to geologists, geotechnical
engineers and surveyors.
Earthquakes

Earthquake An earthquake (also known as

a quake, tremor or temblor) is the result of a
sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that
creates seismic waves.
Theseismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an
area refers to the frequency, type and size of
earthquakes experienced over a period of time.
Earthquakes are measured using observations
from seismometers. The moment magnitude is the
most common scale on which earthquakes larger
than approximately 5 are reported for the entire
globe.

Focus or Hypocenter The refers to the site of

an earthquake or a nuclear explosion. In the
former, it is a synonym of the focus; in the latter,
of ground zero. An earthquake's hypocenter is the
position where the strain energy stored in the rock
is first released, marking the point where
the fault begins to rupture.[1] This occurs at the focal
depth below the epicenter.

Epicenter - The epicenter is the point on

the Earth's surface that is directly above
the hypocenter or focus, the point where
an earthquake or underground explosion originates.
The word derives from the New
Latin noun epicentrum. In the case of earthquakes,
the epicenter is directly above the point where
the fault begins to rupture, and in most cases, it is
the area of greatest damage. However, in larger
events, the length of the fault rupture is much
longer, and damage can be spread across the
rupture zone.
 San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a
continental transform fault that runs a length of
roughly 810 miles (1,300 km) through California in
the United States. The fault's motion is right-
lateral strike-slip(horizontal motion). It forms
the tectonic boundary between the Pacific
Plate and the North American Plate. The fault was
first identified in Northern California by the UC
Berkeley geology professor Andrew Lawson in
1895 and named by him after a small lake which
lies in a linear valley formed by the fault just south
of San Francisco, the Laguna de San Andreas.
After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Lawson
also discovered that the San Andreas Fault
stretched southward into southern California.
Large-scale (hundreds of miles) lateral movement
along the fault was first proposed in a 1953 paper
by geologists Mason Hill and Thomas Dibblee

Ring of Fire - The Pacific Ring of Fire, or

just Ring of Fire for short, is an area where a large
number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a
40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is
associated with a nearly continuous series
of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic
belts and/or plate movements. The Ring of Fire has
452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the
world's active and dormant volcanoes.[1] It is
sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt or the
circum-Pacific seismic belt.
Types of Earthquake

Volcanic Earthquake A volcano tectonic

earthquake is an earthquake induced by the
movement (injection or withdrawal) ofmagma.[1] The
movement results in pressure changes in the rock
around where the magma has experienced stress.
At some point, the rock may break or move. The
earthquakes may also be related
to dike intrusion and may occur as earthquake
swarms.[2] An example is the 20072008 Nazko
earthquake swarm in central British
Columbia, Canada.

Tectonic Earthquake - Tectonic earthquakes

occur anywhere in the earth where there is
sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive
fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides
of a fault move past each other smoothly
and aseismicallyonly if there are no irregularities
or asperities along the fault surface that increase
the frictional resistance.

Artificial or Human Induced Earthquake - The

natural inclination is to say that making an
artificial earthquake is outside of human reach. But
is it? There are those who think that earthquakes
are being artificially created for a new kind of terror
war. There is one clear instance where an
earthquake was triggered as a result of an
underground atomic explosion. For the moment, we
will put this aside and examine the idea concerning
the possibility of manufacturing an earthquake on
demand. We shall first look at the principle of
amplification by using resonance.
Locating and Measuring Earthquakes

Seismic Waves are waves of energy that travel

through the Earth's layers, and are a result of
an earthquake, explosion, or a volcano that imparts
low-frequency acoustic energy. Many other natural
and anthropogenic sources create low amplitude
waves commonly referred to as ambient vibrations.
Seismic waves are studied
by geophysicists called seismologists. Seismic
wave fields are recorded by
a seismometer, hydrophone (in water),
oraccelerometer.

Body Waves Body waves travel through the

interior of the Earth. They create raypaths refracted
by the varying density and modulus (stiffness) of
the Earth's interior. The density and modulus, in
turn, vary according to temperature, composition,
and phase. This effect is similar to
therefraction of light waves.

Primary Waves are a type of elastic wave,

called seismic waves in seismology, that can travel
through a continuum. The continuum is made up
of gases (as sound waves), liquids, or solids,
including the Earth. P-waves could be produced
by earthquakes and recorded byseismographs.
 Secondary Waves - as a shear or transverse
wave, so motion is perpendicular to the direction of
wave propagation: S-waves are like waves in a
rope, as opposed to waves moving through
a slinky, the P-wave. The wave moves through
elastic media, and the main restoring force comes
from shear effects. These waves do not diverge,
and they obey the continuity equation for
incompressible media.

Undisturbed Material for Reference

Longwaves In radio, longwave refers to parts of

the radio spectrum with relatively long wavelengths.
The term is a historic one dating from the early 20th
century, when the radio spectrum was considered
to consist of long, medium and short wavelengths.
Most modern radio systems and devices use
wavelengths which would then have been
considered 'ultra-short'.

Seismograph is another Greek term

from seisms , to draw. It is often used to
meanseismometer, though it is more applicable to
the older instruments in which the measuring and
recording of ground motion were combined than to
modern systems, in which these functions are
separated. Both types provide a continuous record
of ground motion; this distinguishes them
from seismoscopes, which merely indicate that
motion has occurred, perhaps with some simple
measure of how large it was.
 Richter Scale The Richter magnitude
scale (often shortened to Richter scale) is one of a
number of ways that have been developed to
assign a single number to quantify the energy
contained in an earthquake.The scale is a base-
10 logarithmic scale. The magnitude is defined as
the logarithm of the ratio of theamplitude of waves
measured by a seismograph to an arbitrary small
amplitude. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the
Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times
larger than one that measures 4.0, and
corresponds to a 31.6 times larger release of
energy.

Mercalli Scale The Mercalli intensity scale is

a seismic scale used for measuring the intensity of
an earthquake. It measures the effects of an
earthquake, and is distinct from the moment

magnitude usually reported for an earthquake

(sometimes described as the obsolete Richter
magnitude), which is a measure of
the energy released. The intensity of an earthquake
is not totally determined by its magnitude.

Rossi Forel Intensity Scale - The RossiForel

scale was one of the first seismic scales to reflect
earthquake intensities. Developed by Michele
Stefano Conte de Rossiof Italy and Franois-
Alphonse Forel of Switzerland in the late 19th
century, it was used for about two decades until the
introduction of theMercalli intensity scale in 1902.
Effects of Earthquake

The main effects of earthquakes are:

1.Deformed ground surface

2.Damage to man made structures
3.Damage to towns and cities
4.Loss of human and animal life
5.Devastating fires
6.Landslides
7.Flash floods
8.Tsunamis
9.Seiche
10.Sandblows
11.Faults

Safety Measures During Earthquake

During the earthquake:

1. Do not panic, keep calm.

2. Douse all fires.
3. If the earthquake catches you indoors, stay indoors. Take cover under a sturdy piece of
furniture. Stay away from glass, or loose hanging objects.
4. If you are outside, move away from buildings, steep slopes and utility wires.
5. If you are in a crowded place, do not rush for cover or to doorways.
6. If you are in a moving vehicle, stop as quickly as safety permits, but stay in the vehicle
until the shaking stops.
7. If you are in a lift, get out of the lift as quickly as possible.
8. If you are in a tunnel, move out of the tunnel to the open as quickly as safety permits.

After the earthquake:

1. Check for casualties and seek assistance if needed.

2. If you suspect a gas leak, open windows and shut off the main valve. Leave the building
and report the gas leaks. Do not light a fire or use the telephone at the site.
3. Turn off the main valve if water supply is damaged.
4. Do not use the telephone except to report an emergency or to obtain assistance.
5. Stay out of severely damaged buildings as aftershocks may cause them to collapse.
Report any building damage to the authorities.
6. As a precaution against tsunamis, stay away from shores, beaches and low-lying coastal
areas. If you are there, move inland or to higher grounds. The upper floors of high,
multi-storey, reinforced concrete building can provide safe refuge if there is no time to
quickly move inland or to higher grounds.