Earth Science

The Brunton compass is used to measure the spatial orientation of rock layers and other rock features. Many rock units show planar surfaces or linear features. These include bedding surfaces, fault surfaces, fracture surfaces, joint surfaces, foliation, and mineral alignment.

These measurements give geologists the raw data they need to study how rock units formed and how they changed over time. The directions are recorded as strike and dip. Strike is the direction of a flat surface, and dip...

Topographic maps show Earth’s surface in a plan view, which means an overhead view. They give a clear look at land shape from above. These maps are a standard way to represent three-dimensional terrain on a flat page.

Contour lines are the key feature of a topographic map. Each line connects places with the same elevation, or height above sea level. The spacing between contour lines is called the elevation interval, and it depends on how much detail the map shows and on the land itself.

Geologic maps show rock units at Earth’s surface and help geologists infer what lies below it. They began in Europe in the mid-to-late 18th century and have since become a key tool for studying rock distribution, subsurface structure, and changes through time. A modern geologic map is a data-rich, two-dimensional plan view built on a topographic map.

On these maps, color variations mark specific rock units. The lines where one unit meets another are called contacts. Geologic maps also use...

Mineral crystal shapes and cleavage reveal how a mineral is built at the atomic level. These physical properties are measurable and visible traits that help identify minerals. They include color, streak, magnetic properties, hardness, crystal growth form, and crystal cleavage.

Each of these properties is specific to a mineral. They are tied to the mineral’s chemical make-up and atomic structure. Crystal growth form and crystal cleavage both come mainly from the repeated pattern of basic atomic...

Mineral color, streak, luster, hardness, magnetism, and acid reaction help identify minerals and rocks. These physical properties can be seen or measured in hand samples and in the field. They are tied to a mineral’s chemical makeup and, to a lesser extent, its atomic structure.

The video also explains why these clues work for rocks as well as minerals. Rocks are made of mineral grains, and most rocks contain more than one mineral type, which means they are polymineralic. Some rocks are...

Volcanic rock forms when magma reaches Earth’s surface and cools. It is a type of igneous rock, which means it comes from cooling and crystallization of molten material. When magma is on the surface, it is called lava.

Magma is molten rock that is usually between about 800 °C and 1,200 °C. It forms inside Earth through three main melting processes. These are the addition of heat, the addition of volatiles, and decompression.

Each way of making magma can produce a different kind of magma. That...

Igneous rocks form when hot liquid rock, called magma, cools and crystallizes. Magma temperatures typically range from about 800 °C to 1,200 °C. These rocks record the freezing of molten material inside Earth.

Sediment biomarkers can record past climate conditions, and branched GDGTs are one example used to study temperature in freshwater basins. These organic compounds are extracted from natural samples, purified, and then measured to help reconstruct environments from the past. In paleoclimatology, scientists use these records to better understand climate change over time.

Sediments build up over geologic time in sedimentary basins, which are low areas in the Earth’s crust where material is...

Sea surface temperature can be reconstructed from alkenone ratios preserved in marine sediment. Alkenones are long-chain, unsaturated alkyl ketones made by some haptophyte algae, especially coccolithophores such as Emiliania huxleyi and Gephyrocapsa oceanica in the open ocean. The most widely used proxy is the U K'37 index, which compares the C37:2 and C37:3 alkenones. Because the ratio changes with growth temperature, it can be used to estimate past sea surface temperature.

The U K'37 proxy...

Organic material and inorganic material are chemically different. In an ecosystem, living material includes leaves, fungi, bark, and tissue. Non-living material includes rocks, their minerals, oxygen, water, and metals. Organic matter contains carbon linked to other carbon and hydrogen molecules, which sets it apart from inorganic matter.

Carbon is especially flexible in the kinds of bonds it can form. Its valence range from -4 to +4 lets it make up to four separate covalent bonds with nearby...

Large-volume sediment extraction is used to isolate compounds for chemical standards. These standards help labs track the performance, accuracy, and precision of instruments over time. That way, a measurement made today can be compared with one made a year later.

Because standards must be checked over long periods, labs often need large amounts of material. Many chemical standards can be bought from companies such as Sigma-Aldrich and Fisher. But some natural compounds needed for paleoclimatic...

Sediment biomarkers can help scientists reconstruct past air and water temperatures. In this method, a group of organic biomarkers called glycerol-dialkyl glycerol-tetraethers, or GDGTs, is studied in modern sediments and in older sediment layers of known age.

GDGTs are produced by a suite of archaea and bacteria. Their distribution changes in a predictable way in response to temperature. That pattern lets researchers use sediment records to track how climate changed over time.

These...

Saponification helps clean up complex lipid samples before gas chromatography analysis. A total lipid extract, or TLE, from an organic solvent extraction can contain hundreds or even thousands of compounds. Researchers may only need a few target compounds. They may also need to remove unwanted material that gets in the way or co-elutes, meaning it comes off the gas chromatograph at the same time as another compound.

This sample cleanup supports measurement on a gas chromatograph coupled to a...

Column chromatography is used to separate lipid classes in a total lipid extract. A total lipid extract, or TLE, is often a complex mixture made up of hundreds or even thousands of compounds. Researchers may only need a few target compounds, so they remove the compounds they are not studying.

Those target compounds can belong to different classes, including alkanes, ketones, alcohols, and acids. In some studies, a sample may contain many compounds, but only a small set matters for analysis.

Urea adduction separates straight-chain lipids from branched and cyclic compounds in a total lipid extract. Researchers use this step when they want only a small set of target molecules from a sample that may contain hundreds or even thousands of compounds.

For paleothermometry, the target compounds are the alkenones used in U k'37 and the isoprenoidal glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers, or GDGTs, used in MBT/CBT. Together, these organic paleothermometers depend on only six compounds: two...