Geology & the Geosphere Educational Posters, Charts & Maps
for the science classroom and home schoolers.

Geosphere

• more ecosphere posters

Geosphere: Rock Cycle

Poster Text: In the rock cycle, rock is neither created nor destroyed, but is continually recycled. Rock changes both physically and chemically, and is redistributed and transformed. Under the crust of the Earth is a circulating layer of liquid molten rock known as magma. When magma cools and solifies underground or above ground it becomes igneous rock. Igneous rock, through heat and pressure can be transformed into metamorphic rock. Once rocks are ... on the surface of the Earth, weather and erosion produce sediment. The sediment is transported and deposited in layers, which undergo compaction to become sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock can also become exposed to the same process that created it. Some rock becomes magma again through tectonic areas known as subduction zones. It is at these zones that one tectonic plate is pushed down under another....

Geosphere: Plate Tectonics

Poster Text: The earth upon which we stand may seem solid and still, but in fact is in constant motion. That motion is explained in the theory of plate tectonics. The outermost layer of the Earth, the lithosphere, contains the continental crust and oceanic crusts. Those crusts are divided into separate land masses know as plates. These plates are floating on a molten layer of magma and rock called the ... and moving toward each other due to ....

Volcanoes

Volcanoes are openings in a planet's surface where hot, molten (melted) rock, ash and gas escape from below the surface.

• more natural phenomena posters
• mountain posters

Earth Processes Poster Series

volcanoes, earthquakes, plate tectonics, faults & folds, erosion & weathering, glaciers, rocks & minerals

Earthquakes

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Minerals are naturally occurring substances formed through geological processes. A mineral has a characteristic chemical composition, a highly ordered atomic structure and specific physical properties; in comparison a rock is an aggregate of minerals and may not have a specific chemical composition. Minerals range from pure elements and simple salts to very complex compositions of silicates with thousands of known forms. The softest mineral is talc, the hardest mineral is diamond (April Birthstone).

The study of minerals is called mineralogy. Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth.

Examples pictured above: gold, diamond, sulpher, copper, sphalerite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, cinnabar, stibnite, galena, fluorite, corundum, quartz, hematite, rutile, cassiterite, agate, amethyst, magnetite, calcite, rhodochrosite, malachite, azurite, dolomite, ... wulfenite, barite, celestite, anglesite, gypsum, apatite, turquoise, garnet, tourmaline, topaz, beryl, spodumene, orthoclase, analcite, scolectiz.

Meteorites are natural objects originating in outer space that survives impact with Earth's surface.

Most meteorites are stony, about 5% are iron-nickel alloys, and about 1% are a stony-iron combination.

• astronomy - space phenomena