ESPM 15 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Adiabatic Process, Eutrophication, Legume

• School: Berkeley
• Department: Environmental Science, Policy, And Management
• Course: ESPM 15
• Professor: Goldstein Allen

Document Summary

The solar system is around 4. 6 billion years old. Denser planets are found closer to the sun. The solar system formed from coalescing (joining) of small bodies, planetesimals that formed in interstellar space. This is how scientists date inorganic matter (rocks: radioactive dating (isotopes):in certain materials, nuclei are unstable, because forces. Nding protons and neutrons are not strong enough. One time, nuclei break apart, causing radioactive decay (producing daughter products ). The time it takes 1/2 a compound"s material to decay into daughter materials is half life. It is a theory explaining the structure of earth"s crust, earth"s outer shell is divided into plates that glide over the mantle. The driving force behind plate tectonics is convection in the mantle. Convection drives plate tectonics through a combination of pushing and spreading apart at mid-ocean ridges, and pulling and sinking at subduction zones. Water vapor: name two constraints in earth"s early atmosphere. Earth"s early atmosphere was formed by volcanic outgassing.