Earth Science General Quiz

 Earth Science General Quiz

This earth general test has 40 multiple-choice questions.

Take as much time as you need to complete the practice test. When you are finished, check your answers with the answer key at the end of this section.

1. Which element is not made in the nuclear fusion reactions that take place in the cores of stars?

a. carbon

b. uranium

c. oxygen

d. hydrogen

2. The distance from the moon to Earth is some what more than 200,000 miles. How long does it take light to travel from the moon to Earth? Answers are rounded off; choose the best one.

a. about 1 second

b.about 10 seconds

c. about 100 seconds

d. about 1,000 seconds

3. Which planet is between Earth and Mercury?

a. Mars

b. the asteroids

c. Venus

d. Triton

4. When the moon is new, which is true?

a. A solar eclipse could occur.

b. A lunar eclipse could occur.

c. An earth eclipse could occur.

d. A corona eclipse could occur.

5. There are three main factors that cause the midlatitudes to have seasons. Two are (1) Earth's spin axis remains pointed in the same direction in space, and (2) the sun's energy varies with latitude. What is the third?

a. orbit of the moon shifts north and south

b. Earth's spin axis is tilted

c. distance from Earth to sun changes

d. Earth's orbit is an ellipse

6. At about 40° north latitude, New York City is in which climate zone?

a. temperate

b. deciduous

c. doldrums

d. south-arctic

7. The layer of the earth called the asthenosphere is

a. liquid.

b. subducted.

c. "brittle."

d. "plastic."

8. What statement about the two main types of seismic waves allowed seismologists to discover the fact that Earth has a core?

a. S waves do not travel in liquids; P waves do not travel in solids.

b. S waves do not travel in liquids; P waves travel in liquids and solids.

c. S waves do not travel in solids; P waves do not travel in solids.

d. S waves do not travel in solids; P waves travel in liquids and solids.

9. Which is the true statement about the oceans?

a. The Pacific is growing; the Atlantic is shrinking.

b. The Pacific is growing; the Atlantic is growing.

c. The Pacific is shrinking; the Atlantic is shrinking.

d. The Pacific is shrinking; the Atlantic is growing.

10. Which is NOT found at Earth's subduction zones?

a. plunging ocean crust

b. the deepest waters

c. emerging ocean crust

d. crust going into the mantle

11. The increase in energy of an earthquake between any two integers on the Richter scale is a factor of

a. 2.

b. 10.

c. 20.

d. 30.

12. The Himalayas result from

a. a continental collision zone.

b. a plate subduction zone.

c. a volcanic zone.

d. a ridge spreading zone.

13. The geometric arrangement of a mineral's atom goes a long way in determining what property of that mineral?

a. luster

b. color

c. streak

d. cleavage

14. Quartz is made of which two elements?

a. silicon and calcium

b. oxygen and silicon

c. magnesium and calcium

d. oxygen and magnesium

15. The Grand Canyon shows deposits that were established over an interval of about 300 million years. That is about what percent of the age of the earth?

a. 2%

b. 7%

c. 12%

d. 17%

16. The radioactive form of carbon that can be used to date archeological sites that contain ancient wood is

a. carbon-14.

b. carbon-13.

c. carbon-12.

d. carbon-11.

17. Climbing up a mountain in the desert, the dry adiabatic lapse rate applies. If you go up 10,000 meters, about how much would you expect the air to cool?

a. 5° C

b. 5° F

c. 10° C

d. 10° F

18. In terms of percentage, the number 2 gas in the atmosphere is

a. argon.

b. oxygen.

c. water vapor.

d. nitrogen.

19. The Coriolis effect causes

a. the Hadley cell to rise at the equator.

b. northward winds to be deflected west in the northern hemisphere.

c. westerlies to move east in the southern hemisphere.

d. southward winds to be deflected west in the northern hemisphere.

20. In summer, in certain parts of the world, when hot air rises off the continents and pulls in moist air from the ocean, we can have what is called a(n)

a. monsoon.

b. orographic control.

c. maritime still.

d. cyclone.

21. The world's ocean all together contains 1,370,000,000 cubic kilometers of water. The land of Earth is about 150,000,000 square kilo meters. If all the water in all the ocean were to be spread out evenly across the land, about how deep would that water be?

a. 9 kilometers

b. 0.1 kilometer

c. 90 kilometers

d. 0.01 kilometer

22. Which flux of the following involves a change of state of the water, between gas, liquid, or solid?

a. evaporation from ocean

b. soil water moving into plants

c. shallow groundwater becoming spring water

d. rivers flowing into the ocean

23. Which process produces dissolved loads of ions in rivers?

a. estuarine weathering

b. chemical weathering

c. physical weathering

d. watershed weathering

24. A watershed is

a. zone of water whose salt content is in between that of fresh water and that of the ocean.

b. an underground layer of porous rock that conducts water.

c. a place where groundwater seeps out to the surface.

d. the area of land that collects water that is eventually drained by a river.

25. Which is true about the ocean's ions of phosphorus and nitrogen, as you go from shallow water into the deep ocean water?

a. P increases, N decreases

b. P decreases, N decreases

c. P increases, N increases

d. P decreases, N increases

26. The shallow region of the ocean that is around the shorelines of continents is

a. oceanic plain.

b. oceanic sediment floor.

c. continental slope.

d. continental shelf.

27. One country whose climate is warmed quite a bit by the Kuroshio Current is

a. Alaska.

b. Japan.

c. England.

d. Australia.

28. In the southern hemisphere, the Pacific Ocean's gyre is

a. counterclockwise, pushed in part by easterlies to its south.

b. counterclockwise, pushed in part by westerlies to its south.

c. clockwise, pushed in part by easterlies to its south.

d. clockwise, pushed in part by westerlies to its south.

29. Choose the best answer. The two main factors that combine to create the structure of soil are

a. water and air.

b. gravel and humus.

c. life and rock.

d. air and sand.

30. The top layer of the soil, which receives the litter from trees, dead grasses, and other plants, is called the

a. O horizon.

b. A stratum.

c. O stratum.

d. A horizon.

31. Compare two regions at sea level that have the same local air temperature. Both regions have tall mountains as well. One region is dry, and the temperature as a function of altitude is governed by the dry adiabatic lapse rate. The other region is wet and its temperature as a function of altitude is governed by the moist adiabatic lapse rate. What can you say about the altitude as which ice will occur on the mountains of each region?

a. the same

b. higher up in the moist region

c. higher up in the dry region

d. cannot tell, other factors dominate

32. One unusual property of water is

a. heat of vaporization is larger than heat of melting.

b. expands upon freezing.

c. molecular bonds occur at an angle.

d. needs a "seed" to crystallize.

33. There are about 700 billion tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Terrestrial photosynthesis takes about 60 billion tons of this carbon and incorporates it into the living tissues of plants each year. If there was no return flux of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from the respiration of animals and soil microbes, in how many years would the atmosphere's carbon dioxide be completely depleted? Round your answer to the nearest whole number.

a. 740

b. 42

c. 12

d. 9

34. The biosphere is defined as the system of the four reservoirs of

a. life, ocean, lakes, atmosphere.

b. soil, ocean, atmosphere, life.

c. troposphere, stratosphere, ocean, soil.

d. marine life, land life, soil, atmosphere.

35. The dinosaurs went extinct from an impact from space

a. 65 million years ago, which left a chemical imprint of radium.

b. 65 million years ago, which left a chemical imprint of iridium.

c. 540 million years ago, which left a chemical imprint of radium.

d. 540 million years ago, which left a chemical imprint of iridium.

36. Evidence for the rise in Earth's oxygen is found in

a. fossilized bones.

b. preserved seawater.

c. preserved air in ice cores.

d. fossilized soils.

37. The most important component in human induced acid deposition is

a. HNO₃.

b. CO₂.

c. CFCs.

d. H₂SO₄.

38. Some of the world's land is unusable because it's desert, ice, or rock. Another fraction of the world's land is already used for crops and grazing. About how much, after accounting for these two categories, of the world's land could still be developed for exclusively human use?

a.

b.

c.

d.

39. A new science that can help us figure out how to live in balance with nature is called

a. econology.

b. sustainability.

c. astrobiology.

d. naturenomics.

40. To better predict the effects of the rising levels of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, scientists will have to forge better understandings of which two processes?

a. acid deposition fallout time and cloud formation

b. thermohaline circulation and duration of eutrophication

c. cloud formation and the thermohaline circulation

d. duration of eutrophication and cloud formation