Rock Cycle
- Simply put, rock cycle is the earth's process of recycling rock.
- Every rock type (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) is related.
By: Celina, Catie, Eric, Vondra & Emily
Rock Cycle
Metamorphic Rocks
Sedimentary Rocks
- The rock cycle was invented by an 18th century farmer James Hutton
Metamorphic Rocks
Sorting:
- The degree of uniformity of particle size
- Well sorted - particles very similar in size
- Poorly sorted - a wide range in particle size
- Well sorted rocks usually have traveled a longer distance than poorly sorted rocks
- What he found was that the earth is constantly being transformed from one rock type to another.
meta="change"; morph="form"
- When a rock is exposed to high temperatures and pressures, they can be changed chemically or physically...at this point, the rock becomes metamorphic
Interesting discoveries
Older rocks on the surface are destroyed by erosion, or by being pushed down into the crust and melted. New rock is formed as sediments are compressed into sedimentary rocks, erupted magma cools and solidifies into igneous rocks, and heat and pressure changes rocks underground into metamorphic rocks.
Sedimentary Rocks
Sedimentary Rock
Interesting Discoveries
Transportation and Deposition:
- Worn down sediments are transported by wind or water
- During this rock fragments are rounded and sorted
- When water/wind slows sediment is deposited at the bottom of the body of water.
- Usually in parallel layers called strata or bedding
- Steno's principle of origional horizontalty
- Heavy older material is on the bottom, lighter newer material is on the top
Weathering and Erosion
- Weathering begins when rocks are exposed at the surface of the Earth.
- There are Two types:
- Physical
- Breaks down rocks into smaller rock fragments.
- Chemical
- Breaks down the internal structure of the minerals ion by ion.
- Water is the most important weathering agent.
- In long term battles between rock and water, water will always win every time. Water whether through surface weathering and erosion or withing the groundwater, is very effective at breaking down rocks.
- Magma which swells up to the ocean floor is successfully working both ends of the rock cycle, it makes a new rock which is basalt. The majority of liquid rock that produces it to the surface is normally the least dense magma in the area.
Igneous Rocks
Conclusion
- The rock cycle is a basic concept in geology that describes a time consuming transitions through geologic time.
- It may seem like rocks are permanent, but in reality rocks are constantly changing and moving throughout this cycle.
- Material: Molten Rock
- lava - extruded and cooled onto earth's surface from volcanoes
- magma - cools below the earths surface
- Composition:
- Felsic - high amount of quartz and flespar, light colored (pink or more white)
- intermediate - middle composition between felsic and mafic (gray color)
- Mafic - high amount of calcium rick feldspar (dark-near black color)
- Ultramafic - high amount of olivine ( very dark, commonly green)
- Texture:
- Tell us how quickly the rock was cooled and if it was cooled from ash, magma or lava.
Conclusion
Igneous Rock
- Igneous can change to Metamorphic, Metamorphic to Sedimentary,Sedimentary to Igneous or Igneous to Sedimentary. Sedimentary to Metamorphic or Metamorphic to Igneous.
- All these rocks can even change straight back to their original form. In conclusion all rocks can form into any other type of rock. With the process of melting and cooling, weather and erosion and heat and pressure. With these three processes and time the rock cycle was created.
Igneous rock: Texture
- Phaneritic: minerals coarse enough see with only your eye
- Aphanitic: minerals are too fine grained to see without the aid of a handlens
- Vesicular: contains numerous gas bubbles (vesicles)
- Glassy: no crystal structure due to rapid cooling. Looks like glass.
- Pyroclastic: fragmental texture composed of larger pyroclass (clasts of lava, pumice, and country rock) in a matrix of volcanic ash
- Youngest rocks on earth
- Form
- When melted parts of the mantle and earths crust solidify into new rocks
- The driving force behind molten rock formation
- plate tectonics
- Igneous rocks are classified by:
- texture
- composition
- material
Rock Cycle Introduction
Metamorphic Rock
meta= change; morph=form
- founder of modern geoscience
- Rock cycle
- depicts the relationships between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.
- Rocks
- created
- changed
- broken down