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A Mountain Memers guide to Making Scientific Mountain Memes
2
A Science Memers guide to scientific memes: Learn, then apply
Model
How are the Andes Mountains formed?
Convection Currents
Convection currents are a result the cooling and heating of gasses and liquids. In earths mantle, particles closer to the lower half of the upper mantle are heated up by the lower three layers. That causes the particles to spread apart, as the increase in temperature causes the particles to have more energy, making them move faster, expanding the liquid and decreasing density. This causes the warm liquid to rise. Once it has risen to the colder upper half of the mantle, the liquid starts cooling down, clumping together and becoming denser, as the closer the particles are to each other the denser the magma will be. This causes the now cooled down magma to sink. This cycle of heating and cooling is known as a convection current, the process of an endothermic process (heating up and increasing in energy) and an exothermic process (cooling down and decreasing in energy) working in a cycle
How Convection currents work
How does Convection Currents relate to tectonic plates:
Convection currents push the tectonic plates floating on top of the mantle. Convection currents are not regular, hence plates are not all moved in the same direction. Because different plates are moved in different direction thanks to convection currents, they often collide, forming different geographical features, such as the Andes Mountains in this case.
How they are related to Plate Tectonics
How it formed
Explanation of model
The Andes Mountains were formed by the Nazca Plate (the oceanic crust) sub ducting underneath the South American plate (continental crust) lifting it up to form the mountains. This is an example of a Convergent boundary, as the two plates are colliding. The Nazca plate, due to being denser, goes underneath the less dense South American plate. This is because gravity pulls down harder on denser objects, causing the Nazca plate to get pulled down more then the south american plate. This process takes millions of years, it is estimated that the Andes Mountains started forming around 10 million years ago, and still are today. The average mountain range will take hundreds of thousands, if not more to form, so this is quite typical for a mountain range as large as this one to take so long.
The Andes is growing.
Mountains, compared to other geographical features, grow very fast (around 4mm a year!) However, the Andes has recently (0ver the past 4 million years) grown 2,500 meters, and is about the double its height! Because of the Andes rapid growth throughout the years, I predict that in a thousand years, the Andes mountains will have leaped higher, being much taller then before.
The Nazca is also a very active plate, consistently pushing against the South American Plate as seen in my model. I predict that this trend isn't going to stop any time soon, and so the mountains will keep growing, and become taller in the next 1,000 years.
How will this look in 1,000 years?
Scientific Memes:
Click on the subtopics to find four meme Ideas for what I discussed today!
Scientific Meme Ideas
Here's a meme Idea:
Andes Mountains
Andes In 1,000 years meme
Other Mountains
Convection Current Ideas
Convection currents be like:
Convection current memes
Oh no its a pun
The Pun is always a classic, and easy to come up with on the spot. Heres an example
Earths Layers Meme
Hey! Crust!
Do you think you are man-tle enough to handle my heat?
Plate Meme Ideas
South American Plate
Plate Meme Ideas
Nazca Plate
Phase changes:
Phase Changes
A phase change is when a substance changes from one state to another. In this case, we will be looking at the Nazca Plate, and the details on how and why it melts when in the mantle. Keep in mind, I made a lot of estimations in my work, as finding conclusive evidence for this online was not possible. However, I hope this represents what I am going for regardless.
Graph:
Liquid
Data
Phase change: melting, solid and liquid are present
Solid
Explanation:
Graph Explanation
The Graph is a heating curve, showing the heating and phase change of the oceanic crust (solid) to liquid mantle (liquid) . This phase change is known as melting. The Nazca plate starts out as a solid, slowly being heat up by the mantle around it during subduction. then, once it reaches around 1,400 degrees Celsius, the slope starts to flatten. The temperature doesn't increase as now it accumulating potential energy to break bonds and change phases. Before, when the temperature was rising, it was increasing in Kinetic energy because the particles increased in speed. Then after 1,500,000 it fully changed states and the temperature starts increasing again This can take from hundreds of thousands to millions of years, the upper estimate (and the one I used for this graph) is around 1 million. The process of melting is known as an endothermic process, as it takes in energy in the form of heat to change phases, unlike say an exothermic process which does the opposite, it releases heat and therefore releases energy
Particle explanation
Particle Explanation
Particle level of Solid explanation
During the time the crust is still a solid, the temperature increases (during the first slope on the graph before the flat line), which cause the neatly packed solid molecules to vibrate. This is known vibrational motion. The more we increase the temperature, the more the vibrational motion of the solid increases. The attraction between the molecules is pulling them close together and packed like a solid. However due to the increase in temperature, eventually the temperature becomes so high that the bonds start to break and a phase change occurs.
Solid
Phase change particle level explanation
Once the temperature is increased to the melting point of oceanic crust, the bonds that hold the solid together break. This process is known as melting, and is an endothermic process. During the phase change both solid and liquid coexist as it takes time for all bonds to break. The temperature doesn't increase during this time because the energy being stored is potential, and therefore does not change the temperature of the substance itself, although the temperature around it can increase.
Phase change
Liquid particle explanation
Once all the crust become magma, it has become a liquid. In a liquid state, the substance has no definite shape, but has a definite volume. Because of this, the particles move a lot faster and will flow over one another, but still have bonds that keep them nearby (otherwise all liquids would become gasses, as they would escape). In a liquid state, temperature of the substance can start rising again, and so the kinetic energy may rise (although in this case it will never rise enough to become a gas).
Liquid
Nazca Plate isn't dead
If this phase change never happened at the mantle, then theoretically the Nazca would keep subduction with nothing to stop it, leaving us with no Nazca plate (which sounds like a problem) Also, many time the mantle escapes, such as in underwater volcanoes on the Nazca that creates new crust, as mantle escapes from them and harden into oceanic crust. This cycle has allowed the Nazca plate to not completely disappear into the mantle, and this is why our geographical feature, the Andes mountains, keeps growing
Why does this matter?
So you might be wondering...
How can I make scientific memes with this. Well one way it to make it relatable to everyday life. Example:
How to make scientific memes with this
It doesn't have to make a lot of sense either. Here's an example of a fun meme that doesn't make a lot of sense
Or...
You can make it only something fellow science memers will understand
Bonds be like during an endothermic phase change
cont.
Credits
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2015/november/formation-of-the-andes.html#:~:text=The%20Andes%20were%20formed%20by,when%20and%20how%20it%20happened.
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/node/1348#:~:text=Geologists%20have%20hypothesized%20that%20the,currents%20in%20the%20earth's%20mantle.&text=Tremendous%20heat%20and%20pressure%20within,make%20up%20the%20earth's%20crust
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2526#:~:text=It%20takes%20tens%20of%20thousands,thousands%20of%20years%20or%20more.
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/plate-tectonics-types-of-plate-boundaries.htm
https://www.learner.org/wp-content/interactive/rockcycle/change2.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/crust_(geology).htm#:~:text=Some%20of%20these%20less%20dense,boundary%20with%20the%20underlying%20mantle.
https://all-geo.org/metageologist/2012/09/oceanic-crust-that-sinking-feeling/#:~:text=This%20process%20is%20fairly%20continuous,at%20around%2050%20kilometers%20depth.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/mantle/#:~:text=The%20temperature%20of%20the%20mantle,pressure%20generally%20increase%20with%20depth.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-earthscience/chapter/mountain-formation/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/delamination
https://www.livescience.com/23387-mariana-trench.html
livescience.com
All memes were created or re created by me. Any other images used falls under fair use and so doesn't need to be credtied
If my graphs are hard to see I appologze, those were the best pictures I got. I still have the paper, so If you need me to retry Im up for that :)