GEOS 1004 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Banaba Island, Pyroxene, Anorthosite
Document Summary
Exhumation - process by which rocks are unburied in earth"s crust a. b. Allows us to see rocks that were deep down in the crust. Thrust faulting pushes buried rocks towards the surface; and erosion removes overlying material a. Erosion is continuous - water and gravity i. Buoyancy of thickened crust causes slow uplift after mountain growth stops i. i. e. appalachians i. Blacksburg is located in a peripheral foreland basin ii. Minerals - building blocks of rocks (and thus, mountains, continents, etc. ) a. Glass, on the other hand, looks clear and crystalline but it slowly flows and creeps over time iv. v. Coral (calcium carbonate) can become calcite (calcium carbonate; different structure) with burial b. Rock- a rock is a mass of minerals or mineral like material i. ii. iii. Elements are building blocks of minerals, and minerals are building blocks of rocks. Granite = quartz, k-feldspar, biotite and hornblende d. Minerals have an orderly and repeating internal structure.
