Essential Questions:

1. What is an earth’s lithosphere?

2. What are the types of crust? A
mantle?
3. How do you describe plate tectonics?
4. How it is being related to continental
drift?
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 The crust is made of a variety of solid rocks
like sedimentary, metamorphic, igneous. It has
an average density of 2.8 g/cm3 and its
thickness ranges from 5 to 50 km.
The crust is thickest in a part where a
relatively young mountain is present and
thinnest along ocean floor.
 The mantle is one of the three main layers of the Earth. It lies between the innermost layer, the core, and the thin outermost layer, the crust. The mantle consists of hot, dense, semisolid
rock and is about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) thick. Lithosphere.

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 Oceanic crust, extending 5-10 kilometers (3-6
kilometers) beneath the ocean floor, is mostly
composed of different types of basalts.
Geologists often refer to the rocks of the oceanic
crust as “sima.”
 Sima stands for silicate and magnesium, the
most abundant minerals in oceanic crust.
(Basalts are a sima rocks.) Oceanic crust is
dense, almost 3 grams per cubic centimeter (1.7
ounces per cubic inch).
 Oceanic crust is constantly formed at mid-
ocean ridges, where tectonic plates are tearing
apart from each other. As magma that wells up
from these rifts in Earth’s surface cools, it
becomes young oceanic crust. The age and
density of oceanic crust increases with distance
from mid-ocean ridges.
Just as oceanic crust is formed at mid-ocean
ridges, it is destroyed in subduction zones.
 Continental crust is mostly composed of
different types of granites. Geologists often
refer to the rocks of the continental crust as
“sial.” 
Sial stands for silicate and aluminum, the most
abundant minerals in continental crust. Sial can
be much thicker than sima (as thick as 70
kilometers kilometers (44 miles)), but also
slightly less dense (about 2.7 grams per cubic
centimeter (1.6 ounces per cubic inch)). 
 As with oceanic crust, continental crust is
created by plate tectonics. At convergent plate
boundaries, where tectonic plates crash into each
other, continental crust is thrust up in the process
of orogeny, or mountain-building.
For this reason, the thickest parts of continental
crust are at the world’s tallest mountain ranges.
According to plate tectonics model, the entire
lithosphere of the Earth is broken into numerous
segments called plates.
 Continental crust is mostly composed of
different types of granites. Geologists often
refer to the rocks of the continental crust as
“sial.” 
Sial stands for silicate and aluminum, the most
abundant minerals in continental crust. Sial can
be much thicker than sima (as thick as 70
kilometers kilometers (44 miles)), but also
slightly less dense (about 2.7 grams per cubic
centimeter (1.6 ounces per cubic inch)). 
 As shown in the figure, there are seven
large plates and a number of smaller ones,
including the Philippine plate.
The plates move very slowly but
constantly, and this movement is called
tectonics, thus the theory of moving
lithospheric plates is called plate tectonics.
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 From the deepest ocean trench to the tallest
mountain, plate tectonics explains the features
and movement of Earth's surface in the present
and the past.
Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer
shell is divided into several plates that glide over
the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core.
The plates act like a hard and rigid shell compared
to Earth's mantle. This strong outer layer is called
the lithosphere.
 Developed from the 1950s through the 1970s,
plate tectonics is the modern version of 
continental drift, a theory first proposed by
scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912.
Wegener didn't have an explanation for how
continents could move around the planet, but
researchers do now. Plate tectonics is the unifying
theory of geology, said Nicholas van der Elst, a
seismologist at Columbia University's Lamont-
Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.
 The driving force behind plate tectonics is
convection in the mantle. Hot material near the
Earth's core rises, and colder mantle rock sinks. "It's
kind of like a pot boiling on a stove," Van der Elst
said.
The convection drive plates tectonics through a
combination of pushing and spreading apart at 
mid-ocean ridges and pulling and sinking downward
at subduction zones, researchers think. Scientists
continue to study and debate the mechanisms that
move the plates.
 A subduction zone is a collision between two
of Earth's tectonic plates, where one plate
sinks into the mantle underneath the other
plate.
 Mid-ocean ridges are gaps between tectonic plates
that mantle the Earth like seams on a baseball. Hot
magma wells up at the ridges, forming new ocean
crust and shoving the plates apart.
At subduction zones, two tectonic plates meet and
one slides beneath the other back into the mantle, the
layer underneath the crust. The cold, sinking plate
pulls the crust behind it downward.
Many spectacular volcanoes are found along
subduction zones, such as the "Ring of Fire" that
surrounds the Pacific Ocean.
 Subduction zones occur all around the edge of
the Pacific Ocean, offshore of Washington,
Canada, Alaska, Russia, Japan and Indonesia.
Called the "Ring of Fire," these subduction
zones are responsible for the world's biggest
earthquakes, the most terrible tsunamis and
some of the worst volcanic eruptions.
Review Lessons:
Essential Questions:
1. What causes earthquakes?
2. What are the three types of seismic waves
release by an earthquakes?
3. How to determine the epicenter of an
earthquake?

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 What causes earthquakes?
Earthquakes happen every day in New
Zealand. Instruments record the ground shaking
from over 14,000 earthquakes in and around the
country each year. Most are too small to be
noticed, but between 150 and 200 are big
enough to be felt.
 Plate movement and faults
Earth’s seemingly solid outer surface – the
continents with their submarine shelves, and the
rocky floor of the deep ocean – is in fact divided
like a jigsaw puzzle into huge sections called plates.
Driven by convection currents deep within the
earth, these plates move a few centimeters per
year across the surface of the planet – the rate at
which your fingernails grow. (Convection is the
transfer of heat due to currents of molecules.)
 Earthquakes are most frequent in regions where
two moving plates meet and press against each
other. New Zealand is in such a region – it
straddles the boundary between the Pacific Plate,
which covers almost a quarter of the earth’s
surface, and the Australian Plate.
Where plates collide, the brittle top layer of the
plate – the crust – slowly distorts, and stress
builds up over many years until the crust ruptures.
 Earthquakes usually occur along faults, which
are existing fractures in the crust. Sometimes the
blocks of rock on either side of a fault abruptly
shift to a new position in just a few seconds.
This sudden release of energy sends out waves,
which are felt on the surface as an earthquake. The
strength of the quake depends on the area of fault
that has shifted and the amount of movement.
 Earthquake releases three types of seismic waves;
Primary (P-waves), Secondary (S-waves), and Long
surface waves (L-waves). The first two travel into the
Earth’s interior while the last one on the surface.
The P-wave (primary or pressure wave) is a pulse
of energy that travels quickly through the earth and
through liquids. It forces the ground to move
backwards and forwards as it is compressed and
expanded.
 The S-wave (secondary or shear wave)
follows more slowly, with a swaying, rolling
motion that shakes the ground back and
forth perpendicular to the direction of the
wave.
These waves travel at different velocities
thus, do not arrive at a seismic recording
station at the same time.
 The farther the recording instrument is
from the focus, the greater the difference in
arrival times of the first P-wave compared to
the first S-wave.
The difference in the arrival time will tell
us the distance of the earthquake’s focus
from the seismic recording station.
However, it does not tell in which direction
it came from.
 The difference in velocity between P and S
waves, the distance of earthquake epicenter
from the recording station can be
determined. If they have data from three
recording stations, the exact position of an
earthquake epicenter can be located using
the triangulation method.
 Activity 1
Find the Center
Objective:
Locate the epicenter of an earthquake using the
triangulation method.
Materials:
hypothetical records of earthquake waves,
Philippine map, drawing compass, and ruler
Procedure:
1. Study the data showing the difference in the arrival time of P-waves and
S-waves on three seismic recording stations.
Recording Time of difference in Distance of
Station the arrival time of P- epicenter from
wave and S-wave the station (km)
(seconds)
Batangas 32
Puerto Princesa 40.48 400
Davao 25.6
506
320
 Since the scale of the Philippine map on page 9 of the LM is 1.5 cm: 200
km, set the drawing compass to the following computed distance on the map.

Recording How to compute the Computed

Station distance on the map distance on the
map (cm)
Batangas 400 km (1.5 cm/200 km
Puerto Princesa 506 km (1.5 cm/200 km)
3
Davao 320 km (1.5 cm/200 km) 3.8
2.4
3. 2.

1.

5.
4.
6. Why is it that continental crust is less dense
than oceanic crust even though it is thicker?
7. What consist the oceanic crust?
8. Differentiate tectonics from plate tectonics?
9. What causes earthquakes?