vft-exploring-earths-mantle-fall_2023

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Texas A&M University *

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1330

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Geology

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Dec 6, 2023

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docx

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7

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Virtual Field Trip: Exploring Earth’s Mantle Physical Geology GEOL1330 Fall 2023 Name: myUH ID number: Professor’s Name: Class Time: Academic Honesty (Signature Required) The Virtual Field Trip to Earth’s Mantle is to be completed by yourself; you should not work with a partner or group. If you are unfamiliar with a word or geologic concept, it is okay to look it up online to find the correct spelling and definition. If you find yourself needing help, physical geology teaching assistants staff the Geoscience Learning Center team on Microsoft Teams. Use join code 8aywj37 to add yourself to the GLC team, then go to the physical geology channel for assistance. A teaching assistant monitors the channel Monday to Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. By submitting this work, I, Type Your Name Here attest that I have not violated the UH Academic Honesty code. I completed this assignment by myself and did not copy any portion of my answers from another student, a website, or any other source. Instructions All answers should be written in complete sentences and typed in this document. Any answers not written in complete sentences will be marked as incorrect and will not receive credit. Educators and students are now turning to open educational resources (OER) for ease of access as well as low cost. The O stands for open that gives users permission to redistribute this content in any format including print. We made this field trip available under the Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC-SA license which gives anyone the right to use the material, but you must acknowledge (attribute or BY) and only use it non-commercially (NC). In addition, you may share and modify our material (SA). Even though this is not a traditional copyright, we expect students to respect our material and not share the questions and your answers with others. If you submit this material to an online learning platform such as Chegg, Course Hero or any other education technology website, you are violating our CC license and it will be removed from that site. 1
Assignment Submission Save your completed PDF assignment as “yourlastname_firstname_VFTMantle”. Email your completed documents to file to easglc@cougarnet.uh.edu with the subject “Mantle VFT.” Teaching Assistants will begin grading submissions after the deadline. After your work is graded, you will receive a confirmation email from the TA. If your assignment requires resubmission, you will have 48 hours to do so. Virtual Field Trip: Exploring Earth’s Mantle Preface Geological field trips are one of the primary ways that geologists can learn about the natural history of the Earth. Typical tools involved with classic geological field trips include the use of rock hammers, hand lenses and map boards. However, these classic geologic field trips are only possible if the rocks of interest are exposed at Earth’s surface. The vast majority of Earth’s geology is deep beneath our feet, in the Earth’s interior. In this assignment, we will explore Earth’s mantle. The mantle was once thought to be a relatively featureless realm between the crust and core. However, current ideas (see Fig. 1 below) suggest the mantle contains hot, buoyant ‘plumes’ of abnormally hot rock that rise under ‘hotspot chains’ such as Hawaii. Under subduction zones, ancient oceanic crust is inserted and recycled into the mantle, sinking and buckling under its own weight to the core-mantle boundary. Geophysical techniques such as seismic tomography provide geologists with a window to peer into the 3D structure of the mantle to study present tectonic processes and the geologic past. This exercise will introduce students to mantle tomography, which is providing increasingly clearer images of Earth’s interior that are very similar to CT scans utilized by medical doctors. 2
Figure 1: Earth’s mantle showing possible mantle flows (red arrows). Whole-mantle convection is driven by the sinking of cooler, subducted oceanic lithosphere, and the rising of hot, mantle plumes from the core-mantle boundary (re-drawn from USGS). Aims The purpose of this assignment is to make observations of the Earth’s mantle from seismic tomography. Our window into the mantle will be provided by the Hades Underworld Explorer ( http://www.atlas-of-the-underworld.org/hades-underworld- explorer/ ), which was generously built by researcher Dr.Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University, Netherlands. Getting Started Before we begin, let us first review two important terms: cross-sections, and seismic tomography. In this assignment, we look at cross-sections . A cross-section is a view exposed from making a straight cut through an object. For example, the Figure 2 photo below shows a cross-section through an apple. In this exercise, we will look at cross- sections of the Earth. Have another look at Figure 1 (on Page 2). Can you visualize how Figure 1 shows a straight cut through a spherical Earth? Figure 2: Cross-section through an apple shown on the right. 3
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