Rocks, the rock cycle
and soil
Igneous Rocks
Getting started
● Name the layers A, B, C and D
● What does layer B consist of?
● What happens when the material in layer B is ejected through the
Earth’s surface
Rocks are different
❖ Rocks differ from one another because they were found in different
ways.
❖ The scientists who study rocks are called geologists.
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What are igneous rocks?
❖ Igneous = fire
❖ Come from magma that has cooled into solid rock
❖ Magma is hot, like a fire
❖ Magma is coming from the mantle deep below the earth’s surface.
❖ When magma cools it turns into a solid. This process is called
solidification.
Extrusive igneous rocks
❖ Some of the magma comes out at the surface as lava.
❖ When the lava cools, it solidifies into an extrusive igneous rock.
❖ Extrusive = outside the earth’s crust, on the surface.
❖ The rock is a black rock called basalt.
Intrusive igneous rock
❖ Intrusive means inside the earth’s crust.
❖ Some of the magma stays inside the Earth’s crust.
❖ It cools down more slowly than the lava and solidifies into an intrusive
igneous rock.
What are igneous rocks made of??
❖ All igneous rocks are made of minerals.
❖ Each mineral consists of a different group of substances.
❖ The most common substances in the earth’s crust are silica,
aluminium, magnesium and iron.
❖ These substances join in different combinations to form minerals.
What are igneous rocks made of??
❖ The most important characteristic of all igneous rocks is that they are
crystalline.
❖ Crystals are formed when they are cool down.
❖ When the magma is deep below the surface of the Earth it cools
slowly.
❖ This causes the crystals to form slowly.
❖ The crystals are large enough for us to see with the naked eyes.
❖ Inside the rock the crystals get compressed.
Properties of igneous rocks
Hard and durable
Non-porous
* Water does not soak into them.
* There is no gaps between their interlocking crystals.
Minerals
Substances that exist naturally as a crystals are called minerals.
Most rocks are mixture of minerals.
Explaining crystal size
Crystals grow as a particles arranged themselves in patterns. When all the particles are
arranged in crystals, there in no liquid rock left. It can has small solid.
Rocks that cooled quickly has small crystals.
Rocks that cooled slowly has big crystals
❖ The minerals in granite are quartz, feldspar and mica.
❖ Feldspar is sometimes pink.
❖ The lava cools quickly to form an extrusive igneous rock.
❖ The crystals in the rock re too small to see with the naked eyes.Eg
basalt
Rocks, the rock cycle
and soil
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Sedimentary Rocks and
Fossils
Getting started
Look at the photograph.
Describe the rocks. How are they different to igneous rocks?
What are sedimentary rocks?
● Sedimentary rocks = made from small pieces of other rocks stuck together
● Sediments can be transported by gravity,wind,water, or ice
● Rocks are continuously being broken up by a process called weathering.
Physical Weathering
● High and low temperature cracks rocks and breaks up the surface layer.
Chemical Weathering
● Rainwater or acid rain dissolves some rocks.
Biological Weathering
● Plants break up the surface of rocks with their roots.
● Sediments are moved away from their original rock by transpotation.
● Once the rocks are weakened by weathering, they become eroded by rivers.
● The broken-up rocks wear away or erode the sides and bottom of river
valleys. The broken rocks are eroded into sediments. Ice and wind can also erode rocks
into sediments. This process is called erosion.
● All the sediments are carried or transported by rivers. When the water in a river reaches
the sea or a lake, it flows slowly. It drops or deposits the sediments. This is deposition.
● Then sedimentation form new rock. This happen by one or two process.
In compaction the weight of the layers above squash the sediments together
tightly.
In cementation new minerals stick the sediment together.
● Over millions of years the layers at the bottom get more and more
squashed by the layers on top of them.
● These sediments are stuck together by minerals in the water to form
sedimentary rock.
● The diagram shows how sedimentation takes place on the sea floor.
Types of sedimentary rock
Three of the most common types of sedimentary rock are sandstone,
claystone and limestone.
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock which consists of sand grains stuck together.
Most sand is made of quartz because this is a very hard mineral.
Sand is the most resistant to weathering processes at the Earth’s surface.
Sandstone can be red, orange, yellow or grey in colour
It makes a good building material.
Claystone and mudstone has tiny grains.
They were squashed together by the weight of the layers above tem.
It easy to mould wet clay into different shapes.
Limestone is made from layers of shells. The shells were covering sea
animals that died and sank to the bottom of the sea. Limestone is usually
white or grey in colour. Chalk is a pure type of limestone.
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Fossils
Another characteristic of sedimentary rocks is that they sometimes contain
fossils.
Fossils are the preserved remains of animals and plants which we find in
sedimentary rocks.
Fossils
Another characteristic of sedimentary rocks is that they sometimes contain
fossils.
Fossils are the preserved remains of animals and plants which we find in
sedimentary rocks.
How do fossils form?
A fossil can only form if the animal or plant is buried
quickly in a place where there is very little air. This is
why we only find fossils in sedimentary rocks which form
in water on the sea bed or a lake bed. When animals
that live in or near the sea die, their bodies are washed
into the sea. The soft parts of the animals rot away.
Over a long period of time, minerals in the water
gradually replace the
bones of the animal. Eventually the minerals harden into
rock so we have a copy of the original animal as a fossil,
like the dinosaur in the photograph. This fossil is in
limestone and it was formed about 150 million years
ago.
Sometimes only the imprint of the animal in the sediments is left behind. This
kind of fossil is called a mould
Look at the mould of a dinosaur’s footprint in sandstone in Namibia – this
footprint is also about 150 million years old! Below is a fossil mould of a leaf in
shale that is 350 million years old!
Sometimes a mould fills with minerals that harden to a solid. This makes a
cast of the animal.
The photograph below shows two fossils ofammonites in limestone. The m
oulds filled with minerals which hardened to form the shape of the original
animal. Ammonites do not exist on Earth any more. They lived 240 million
years ago so that is how old this fossil is!
Rocks, the rock cycle
and soil
Metamorphic Rocks and
The Rock Cycle
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Metamorphic rocks are made up of crystals.
This means that:
● metamorphic rocks are not porous
● you cannot see separate grains when you look at the rock
through a hand lens.
Metamorphic rocks often look squashed or stripy. Some types
are made up of thin layers.
Marble is a metamorphic rock
Metamorphic rocks form when heat, or high pressure, or both, change igneous or sedimentary
rocks.
The rocks remain solid during the process. They do not get hot enough to melt. The changes
happen in the Earth’s crust.
All igneous and sedimentary rocks can be changed into metamorphic rocks. So there are many
different metamorphic rocks
Some metamorphic rock are,
Marble ( from limestone ), limestone gets hot and it’s a atoms arranged themselves in a new
pattern. This makes big crystal with interlocking tightly.
Slate ( mudstone ), mixture of minerals, high pressure underground squash mudstone. Water is
squeezed out.
Gniess ( partially crystallized magma ) it is hard and often stripy.
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For three type of rock
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For weathering
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Kahood type of rock
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