GEOS126 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Weathering, Chemical Decomposition, Regolith

• School: Macquarie University
• Department: Geography and Planning/Earth Sciences
• Course: GEOS126
• Professor: Dr Stefan Löhr

Document Summary

Lecture 6 - from the mountains to the. Sediments accumulating on the sea floor ultimately start their life as rocks in elevated parts of the continents. Erosion breaks down areas of high elevation which is then dumped into the sea; therefore, most of the land exists at sea level. Physical weathering accelerates chemical weathering, and vice versa: physical weathering splits the rock into increasingly smaller pieces, the more particles, the more surface area, the more efficient the chemical weathering. Products of weathering: source-rock residues, secondary minerals, dissolved constituents. The ph scale: chemical weathering, chemical and mineralogical changes, creates gaps within the rocks which allows physical weathering to infiltrate . A measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions (h+) in a solution. Small changes in the ph scale constitute a large change in the. Geos126 lecture notes amount of hydrogen ions since the scale is logarithmic.