Download Origins: Earth is Born - LathamWHS13-14

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Origins: Earth is Born
Answer the following questions while watching the video.
1. How old is the Earth?
2. If we were to condense the age of the Earth to 24 hours, how long ago did humans
appear? At what time did dinosaurs appear?
3. Explain how the solar system formed.
4. Why is it that the inner planets are all made out of heavier elements, while the
outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are all made out of lighter
elements? What happened to the lighter elements?
5. Explain how the four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) were
formed.
6. When the Earth was first born, it was so energetic and renewed through material
so quickly that rocks from that period did not survive. How is it that we are able
to learn about Earth’s history?
7. What was the Earth’s surface like when it was 25 million years old? (You can
think of this as approximately 8 minutes after midnight in the 24-hour timeframe
in Question 2.)
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8. Explain how the core of the Earth formed.
9. Why is the Earth’s core so important? What does it protect us from?
10. What do scientists believe happened to Mars’ atmosphere? Why did this happen?
11. What two things did scientists discover about the moon compared to the Earth?
12. Explain how the moon formed.
13. What is the rate that scientists have calculated at which the moon is currently
moving away from the Earth?
14. What else did the collision that formed the moon cause to happen to the Earth?
Why is this so important?
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15. When did the Earth’s surface first cool to form crust?
16. What is it that scientists are studying to learn about the Earth’s first crust?
17. What is the newly predicted age of the Earth’s first crust?
18. When is it believed the oceans first formed on Earth?
19. What two things could have contributed to the formation of the oceans?
20. On the 24 hour clock, by when did all of this happen?
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