Safa Fidama
NSCI 232
Mountains Reflective Journal
Where do mountains come from? This was the question we had to answer before the lesson began. I wrote in my journal that mountains from by plate tectonics. When the earth’s surface rupture it takes years and years for it to build the mountains that high, but plate tectonics are the reason. Some mountains have always just been there or have just appeared. When I first responded with plate tectonics I was not entirely sure how it worked. At the time I just kept thinking of two plates converging and building a mountain. As I started to think about Mount Everest and the Appalachian Mountains I realized some mountains have just been there and nothing really ruptured for them to happen.
Mountains are formed as a result of Earth’s plate tectonics converging together. As the plates converge it moves the plates up into the air, causing the mountains to form. A man named Alfred Wegener was the first person to propose continental drift theory, this theory stated that all the continents were once all together Pangaea and eventually continents drifted from their original place. There are three types of convergent plate boundaries: when two oceanic plates collide, an oceanic-continental collision, a continental-continental collision. The collision that makes high mountains is the continental-continental collision.
One activity we did in class was with a boiled egg. We cut around the center of the boiled eggs. Then we pushed the two halves closer together and jotted down what happened. We did the same thing, but by pushing the two halves away from each other. Lastly, we pushed the halves passed each other and recorded what we saw. After all the groups shared what they saw we realized we defined three different types of continental drift. The pushing of the halves together was convergence, pushing away from each other is divergent and moving past each other is transform fault.
Another activity we did in class was “Using Models in Earth Science” this worksheet had a table on it with the movement and name of boundary, and we had to find what geologic activity it could cause. We also had to write our observations from the boiled egg. Followed by a plate tectonics question sheet which individual work was then discussed as class.
The number one activity we did in class that really helped my understanding was the boiled egg. It was like having the Earth in my hands and implying the different things we learned in class. The second activity that helped me understand was the reading. Reading usually gives me a different perspective on the topic. The next activity that helped was the question sheet. I liked that we first worked on it individually and did a checking for understanding with the class. The activity that I really did not see helping me or improved my understanding was the “Using Models in Earth Science” I really cannot pin point, why it was not helpful it just did not help me understand better or clearer.
WORK CITED
McConnell, David, et al. The Good Earth: Introduction to Earth Science. McGraw-Hill Education, 2018.
