Journey to the center of the Earth
Personajes:
Tema: Geosphere
Competencias
Competencia Matemática, en ciencia, tecnología e ingeniería
Materias y cursos por Sistema Educativo
España > Biología y Geología > 1º ESO > Geología
España > Biología y Geología > 3º ESO > Geología
Enunciado
To find out what the Earth is like inside, geologists have studied rocks collected in mines and deep boreholes, materials emitted by volcanoes, and the behavior of seismic waves during earthquakes.
In 1936 the geologist Inge Lehmann observed that, at a depth of about 5,150 km, compressional P-waves from earthquakes underwent a marked increase in their propagation velocity through the Earth's core.
From this he deduced the existence of a solid inner core surrounded by the liquid outer core, which is surrounded by the mantle and the mantle by the crust.
- Draw the internal structure of the earth showing the boundaries of the different layers, indicating the depth and discontinuities.
Observaciones y contexto
Inge Lehmann graduated in mathematics at the University of Copenhagen and Cambridge, but dedicated her career to seismology, being appointed first head of the seismology department of the newly created Royal Danish Geodetic Institute in 1928. She was a contemporary of mathematician Gladys West, who studied geodetic satellite models and their data during the 1970s, which led to the creation of the Global Positioning System, the famous GPS.
Geology was a predominantly male field of work, but since the late nineteenth century a group of women including Inge Lehmann dedicated their lives to it, such as Katia Kraft, who developed her career as a volcano researcher, taking her to travel the world in search of dangerous volcanic eruptions. Etheldred Benett, expert in fossils, who was admitted in 1836 as a member of the Imperial Society of Natural History in Moscow, thinking, given his name, that he was "an English expert in fossils". When it was discovered that it was a woman, it almost created an international problem. We can also mention Dorothea Bate, who traveled alone to remote sites and, when she needed help, hired local men as guides and interpreters. Between 1901 and 1911, she explored the mountainous areas of Crete, Cyprus and the Balearic Islands, finding in the first two, fossils of pygmy elephants and hippopotamuses and in Mallorca, the Myotragus balearicus, or María Gordón, who explained how the mountains of South Tyrol, in the Alps, had been formed. All of them were pioneers and thanks to their work, we have a better knowledge of planet Earth.
Descripción
Group activity (making a mural, for example) or individual (in the notebook) of a drawing of the internal structure of the Earth with its different layers, indicating depth and discontinuities.