Critical Thinking Questions Week 1

Critical and Creative Thinking Questions

Chapter 1.

3. How do you think the principle of uniformitarianism accounts for occasional catastrophic events such as meteorite impacts, huge volcanic eruptions, or great earthquakes?

Principle of Uniformitarianism is defined as the concept that the Processes governing the Earth system today have operated in a similar manner throughout geologic time. Throughout history we have seen that there have been other similar CA strophic events such as meteorite impact that has been said to have wiped out the age of Dinosaurs along with Huge Volcanic Eruptions. The earth is changing as year goes by, however the earths geology stays the same or similar as the past.

5. In what ways do geologic processes affect your daily life?

There are many ways that the Geologic Processes affect my daily life, for example, for the past couple of months we have seen non-stop rain, which increases flooding chances, which could result is landslides, and cause catastrophic events to happen. This could impact travel conditions cause major roads to be closed. Other things that could affect daily life is an eruptions of volcanoes or even earthquakes, because this could results is mass chaos and/or death.

Chapter 2

2. When a volcano erupts, spewing forth a column of hot volcanic ash, the ash particles are tiny fragments of solidified magma that slowly fall to Earth’s surface, forming a layer of sediment. Would a rock formed from cemented particles of volcanic ash be igneous or sedimentary? Can you think of other circumstances that might form rocks that are intermediate between two of the major rock families?

Rocks that are formed from cemented particles of volcanic ash would be considered igneous if the temperature and high enough to form crystal like particles, however if the temperature is low enough they could be considered sedimentary because this uses low temperatures to form rocks. I believe that another circumstance that might form...