Layer to Layer!

Mercury, Venus and the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. There is one specific planet that our class researched about, and that is the earth! I believe that because we live on earth, we needed to research about it right? The earth has five different layers. There is the crust, the Moho, the mantle, the outer core and the inner core. The crust is a thin layer of rock that forms over the Earth’s outer skin. There are two different types of crust- continental crust and oceanic crust. We actually live on the crust! The continental crust is mainly made of igneous rocks, and is divided into two layers. The oceanic crust is crust below the ocean. Oceanic crust is said to have much younger rocks than the continental crust. The next layer is the Moho layer. The full name of is Mohorovicic discontinuity. The Moho layer is the boundary surface that separates the Earth's crust from the mantle. It is also very thin like the crust. The next layer in from the outside is the mantle. Simply, the layer is a layer of hot rock! Included in the mantle layer is dense iron and magnesium. The top of the mantle has a very rigid texture. Lithosphere is also at the uppermost part of the mantle. The next layer is the outer core. The outer core is a layer of molten metal that surrounds in the inner core. This layer lies directly underneath the mantle. This layer is about 2300 kilometers thick. The final main layer of the earth is the inner core. This core is a dense ball of solid metal. Extreme pressure squeezes the atoms of the iron and nickel that it can’t spread out and it becomes liquid. The inner core has a radius of about 1300 kilometers. All of these layers make up the earth’s formation, and without even the smallest layer, such as the crust, there could be no life on earth! So just be glad that we have these layers to keep us alive!

Class Response
Extra Information:
http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~ll125/en/crust.htm
http://www.amateurgeologist.com/content/glossary/earth/earth.html
Picture: http://www.earthscrust.org/earthscrust/science/historic/img/mohorovicicdiscon.gif