GEO 1111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Geosphere, Multicellular Organism, Geologic Time Scale

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Geology
• Course: GEO 1111
• Professor: Donald Cummings

Document Summary

Geo lec 2: the earth as a system notes: Complex phenomena"s can be understood by breaking them up into smaller, simple parts. Kepler"s law of planetary motion: newton"s law of motion was able to explain the phenomena of this. Darwinian evolution: mutation of dna molecules as explanation. Although reductionism is a good approach to many areas in science, it cannot be the only approach when looking at the earth. System: a set of interacting parts that together forms a whole. *feeback: a process operating btw parts of the system that either amplifies (pos feedback)/suppresses (neg feedback) a change that is underway. Use the geosphere (rocks) to determine what happened, how it happened, etc. Modern environments are helpful to conduct experiments and do research as the laws of physics and nature have remained the same. They are forward problems, the opposite of typical geological problems.