SELF-LEARNING PACKAGE IN

EARTH AND
LIFE SCIENCE
Geologic Processes
Quarter 1—Week 3
Learning Competency/ies:
Describe where the Earth’s internal heat comes from
and describe how magma is formed
(S11/12ES-Ib –-14—I c –15)
LESSON 1 : Describe where the Earth’s internal heat comes from

Ready to Launch!

The formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago was a very dynamic pro-
cess. When the Earth was very young, it was an extremely hot and volatile
place. The processes that helped form the Earth so long ago continue to affect
the Earth today. These processes include gravity and radioactivity.
Do you know that part of the Earth is formed due to accretion? It is the
energy from these high velocity which is converted to heat energy. This heat is
trapped inside the Earth and is one part of the Earth's internal heat

Aim at the Target!

At the end of this module, you will be able to:
• Describe where the Earth’s internal heat comes from.

Try This!
Instruction: Choose the correct phrase to complete the sentence. Write your
answers on your paper.
1. The layer below the mantle is the outer core / crust.
2. Convection currents are present in the inner core / mantle.
3. The layer that contains the most iron and nickel is the mantle/ core?
4. The oceanic crust is thin and heavy / thick and heavy.
5. Continental crust is thick and light / thin and heavy.
6. If the Earth was a guava fruit, the space where the seeds are would be the
core / mantle.
7. The core / mantle is Earth’s internal heat source.
8. The Earth’s interior is studied by sending robots down to the core / earth-
quakes.
9. The hottest layer of the Earth is the mantle / core.
10. The layer which has 2/3 of the Earth’s mass is the crust/ mantle.
11. The pieces of the Earth’s crust are the plates / continents.
12. Plates move due to convection in the mantle / movement in the core.
 If you got a perfect score, you have a very good understanding about the
topic and you are ready to learn more. Claim your certificate!
 Keep This in Mind!

Activity

How Heat Affects Molecules

Heat energy causes molecules in an object to behave in a certain

way: when an object is hot, molecules move fast. When it’s cold, they
move slowly. But what does that mean? In this simple heat experi-
ment, you will better understand how molecules act in cold, hot and
warm temperatures.

Materials:

3 clear jars or bowls, water, food coloring or achuete, masking tape,

pens, thermometer (optional)

Instruction:

1.Do this activity at home. Fill one clear jar with warm water. You can
let it sit out for the day until it becomes the same temperature as the
room. Use the masking tape and markers to label this jar ‘Room Tem-
perature.

2.Fill another clear jar ¾ of the way with cold tap water. Add ice cu-
bes to make it even colder or place it in a refrigerator to stay cold
while you wait for the ‘Room Temperature’ jar. Label this jar ‘Cold
Water.’

3.Fill the last clear jar with hot tap water. You can even heat the wa-
ter on the stove. Be careful in doing this step to prevent burns. Then
label this jar ‘Hot Water.’

4.Add a drop of food coloring to each jar and observe what happens
over time.
Analysis

As expected, the food coloring spreads out fastest in the hot water and
slowest in the cold water. Eventually, it spreads out in all three jars. This is a
cool way to demonstrate how heat energy affects molecules in an object.

Instruction: After performing the activity, answer the following questions.

Write your answers on your paper.

1. Describe the movement of the food color in each of the three jars.

2. Can you explain why the food color behave differently in varying tempera-
tures of water?

3. How do molecules move in hot and cold liquid?

Abstraction and Generalization

Where does the Earth’s internal

heat come from?

The Earth’s core is so hot that

it drives the immensely energetic
convection of the mantle, and thus
the shifting of tectonic plates. But
why is the Earth’s core hot in the
first place, and how can we measure
it?

Scientists don’t think there’s a single source of heat in Earth’s interior;

rather, there are three.

The first course was generated when the planet first formed, in the vio-
lent birth of our solar system. Early on, planetoids had accreted from dust
and were hurtling around the sun, crashing into each other to form planets.
These collisions can build up a surprising amount of heat—over 10,000 Kel-
vin. The formation of the Moon, especially, added to Earth’s heat-bank im-
mensely. It’s thought that a Mars-sized planetoid smashed into proto-Earth,
creating a huge amount of heat that may have melted parts of the outer .
Earth. A big fragment deflected off again to form our natural satellite—but
from this collision, we didn’t just retain the Moon; we kept a lot of heat too.
Considering a good 4.5 billion have passed since Earth’s formation, it’s im-
pressive how much of it we’ve retained.

As the Earth formed, the denser

material sunk towards the core. As it
sunk, the friction may have generated
heating of as much as 2000 Kelvin,
which is smaller than the other sources
of heat but still extremely significant.

Half of the Earth’s heat, however,

is thought to come from the decay of ra-
dioactive elements. To understand this,
scientists are studying antineutrinos:
elementary particles that correspond to
neutrinos, which are the lightest of the
subatomic particles and only interact via the weak nuclear force. This means
they rarely interact with everyday matter—they can just travel straight
through planets.

Geoneutrinos are of specific interest to scientists, as they’re produced

when radioactive elements decay. The field of neutrino geophysics is geared
towards researching geoneutrinos and seeing what they can tell us about the
Earth’s interior. Their energy levels can tell us about what kind of material
emitted them: for example, whether they were emitted by a nuclear reactor or
naturally-occurring radioactive elements like Potassium-40, Thorium-232 or
Uranium-238 in the Earth’s core. By knowing how often geoneutrinos interact
with normal matter, we can also estimate how many are being emitted and
what their total energy is.
How Hot Is the Center of the Earth?

The size and scale of the Earth make it difficult for scientists to actually
measure the temperature of Earth’s core. We can go to the moon or the bottom
of the ocean. We can’t go to the center of the Earth. Why not? Well, the core is
about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) below Earth’s surface. The deepest hu-
mans have dug is a meager 12 kilometers (7.5 Thus, we have no direct evi-
dence about the composition of the inner core. Based on the prevalence of var-
ious chemical elements in the Solar System and the theory of planetary for-
mation, however, researchers have come to widely believe the inner core con-
sists of an iron–nickel alloy. And that it’s primarily solid.

Given what we know about the properties of iron then, scientists have
come to various estimates about the temperature of the center of the
Earth. According to current research, the temperature of Earth’s inner core is
approximately 5,700 K (that’s 5,430°C or 9,806°F). And believe it or not, this is
about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun!

Why Is the Center of Earth so Hot?

The Earth’s inner core has three main sources of heat. First, there is heat
left over from when the planet formed and accreted. Earth is actually really
bad at getting rid of heat, so much of the primordial heat from when the core
first developed has been retained. Earth’s tectonic plates essentially act as a
blanket on the interior.

As mentioned earlier, another source of internal heat comes from friction.

As dense iron-rich material descends to the core, heat is released. And finally,
there is heat from the decay of radioactive elements.

So basically, the Earth has all this heat, and no good method of cooling.
So the center of the Earth remains quite hot!
Exploring Earth’s Interior

How do scientists know what is inside the Earth? We don’t have direct evi-
dence! Rocks yield some clues, but they only reveal information about the out-
er crust. In rare instances, a mineral, such as a diamond, comes to the sur-
face from deeper down in the crust or the mantle. To learn about Earth’s inte-
rior, scientists use energy to “see” the different layers of the Earth, just like
doctors can use an MRI, CT scan, or x-ray to see inside our bodies.

Seismic Waves

One ingenious way scientists learn about Earth’s interior is by looking at how
energy travels from the point of an earthquake. These are seismic
waves.Seismic waves travel outward in all directions from where the ground
breaks at an earthquake. These waves are picked up by seismographs around
the world. Two types of seismic waves are most useful for learning about
Earth’s interior.

• P-waves (primary waves) are fastest,

traveling at about 6 to 7 kilometers
(about 4 miles) per second, so they ar-
rive first at the seismometer. P-waves
move in a compression/expansion type
motion, squeezing and unsqueezing
earth materials as they travel. This pro-
duces a change in volume for the mate-
rial. P-waves bend slightly when they
travel from one layer into another. Seis-
mic waves move faster through denser
or more rigid material. As P-waves en-
counter the liquid outer core, which is
less rigid than the mantle, they slow
down. This makes the P-waves arrive
later and further away than would be
expected. The result is a P-wave shad-
ow zone. No P-waves are picked up at
seismographs 104° to 140° from the
earthquakes focus. How P –waves travel
though Earth’s interior
• S-waves (secondary waves) are about half as fast as P-waves, traveling at
about 3.5 km (2 miles) per second, and arrive second at seismographs. S-
waves move in an up and down motion perpendicular to the direction of wave
travel. This produces a change in shape for the earth materials they move
through. Only solids resist a change in shape, so S-waves are only able to
propagate through solids. S-waves cannot travel through liquid.
By tracking seismic waves, scientists have learned what makes up the
planet’s interior. P-waves slow down at the mantle core boundary, so we know
the outer core is less rigid than the mantle. S-waves disappear at the mantle
core boundary, so the outer core is
liquid.

Clues about Earth’s Interior

1. Earth’s overall density is higher

than the density of crustal rocks, so
the core must be made of something
dense, like metal.

2. Since Earth has a magnetic field,

there must be metal within the plan-
et. Iron and nickel are both magnet-
ic.
3.Meteorites are the remains of the
material that formed the early solar
system and are thought to be similar
to material in Earth’s interior. Mete-
orites contain silica minerals and
iron-nickel. The material is like the
boundary between Earth’s core and Letters describe the path of an indi-
mantle. vidual P-wave or S-wave. Waves trav-

The Layers of the Earth

A cross section of Earth showing the following layers: (1) crust (2) mantle
(3a) outer core (3b) inner core (4) lithosphere (5) asthenosphere (6) outer core
(7) inner core. The core, mantle, and crust are divisions based on composi-
tion. The crust is less than 1% of Earth by mass. The oceanic crust is mafic,
while continental crust is often more felsic rock. The mantle is hot, ultramafic
rock. It represents about 68% of Earth’s mass.
 The lithosphere and astheno-
sphere are divisions based on me-
chanical properties:

1. The lithosphere is composed of

both the crust and the portion of the
upper mantle that behaves as a brit-
tle, rigid solid.

2. The asthenosphere is partially

molten upper mantle material that
behaves plastically and can flow.

Crust and Lithosphere

Oceanic crust is composed of mafic magma that erupts on the seafloor to

create basalt lava flows or cools deeper down to create the intrusive igneous
rock gabbro.

Sediments, primarily muds and the shells of

tiny sea creatures, coat the seafloor. Sediment is
thickest near the shore where it comes off the
continents in rivers and on wind currents.

Continental crust is made up of many dif-

ferent types of igneous, metamorphic, and sedi-
mentary rocks. The average composition is gran-
ite, which is much less dense than the mafic
rocks of the oceanic crust. Because it is thick
and has relatively low density, continental crust
rises higher on the mantle than oceanic crust,
which sinks into the mantle to form basins.
Gabbro from ocean crust. The
When filled with water, these basins form the
gabbro is deformed because of
planet’s oceans.
intense faulting at the eruption
 The lithosphere is the outermost me-
chanical layer, which behaves as a brittle, rigid
solid. The lithosphere is about 100 kilometers
thick. The definition of the lithosphere is based
on how earth materials behave, so it includes
the crust and the uppermost mantle, which are
both brittle. Since it is rigid and brittle, when
stresses act on the lithosphere, it breaks. This
is what we experience as an earthquake .

This granite from Missouri is

more than 1 billion years old.

Mantle

The two most important things about the mantle are: (1) it is made of
solid rock, and (2) it is hot. Scientists know that the mantle is made of rock
based on evidence from seismic waves, heat flow, and meteorites. The prop-
erties fit the ultramafic rock peridotite, which is made of the iron- and mag-
nesium-rich silicate minerals. Peridotite is rarely found at Earth’s surface.
Scientists know that the mantle is extremely hot because of the heat flowing
outward from it and because of its physical properties.

Heat flows in two different ways within the Earth:

• Conduction: Heat is transferred through rapid collisions of atoms, which

can only happen if the material is solid. Heat flows from warmer to cool-
er places until all are the same temperature. The mantle is hot mostly
because of heat conducted from the core.

• Convection: If a material is able to move, even if it moves very slowly,

convection currents can form.

Convection in the mantle is the same as convection in a pot of water

on a stove. Convection currents within Earth’s mantle form as material near
the core heats up. As the core heats the bottom layer of mantle material,
particles move more rapidly, decreasing its density and causing it to rise.
The rising material begins the convection current. When the warm material
reaches the surface, it spreads horizontally. The material cools because it is
no longer near the core. It eventually becomes cool and dense enough to
sink back down into the mantle. At the bottom of the mantle, the material
travels horizontally and is heated by the core. It reaches the location where
warm mantle material rises, and the mantle convection cell is complete.

Core

At the planet’s center lies a dense metallic core. Scientists know that
the core is metal because:

The density of Earth’s surface layers is much less than the overall den-
sity of the planet, as calculated from the planet’s rotation. If the surface lay-
ers are less dense than average, then the interior must be denser than aver-
age. Calculations indicate that the core is about 85% iron metal with nickel
metal making up much of the remaining 15%.

Metallic meteorites are thought to be representative of the core. The

85% iron/15% nickel calculation above is also seen in metallic meteorites.
 If Earth’s core were not metal, the planet
would not have a magnetic field. Metals such as
iron are magnetic, but rock, which makes up the
mantle and crust, is not.

Scientists know that the outer core is liquid

and the inner core is solid because:

1. S-waves stop at the inner core.

2. The strong magnetic field is caused by convec- An iron meteorite is the

tion in the liquid outer core. Convection currents closest thing to the Earth’s
in the outer core are due to heat from the even hot-
core.
ter inner core.

Application
Based on the knowledge you have just learned, how will you associate
the occurrence of geophysical activities to the condition of the interior of the
Earth?
Make a simple concept map about your learned ideas on the topic.
Take photos of three visible evidences you can see around you that
prove that the Earth has internal heat.

Reflect
Share to your family what you have learned from this lesson. Describe
to them the layers of the Earth and explain to them where the internal heat of
the Earth came from.

Reinforcement & Enrichment

If you have access with the internet, search for instruments used by ge-
ologists and other related professions to study the interior of the Earth.
Attach the image of each instrument and describe how each instrument is
used to study the interior of the Earth.
 Assess Your Learning

Based on what you’ve learned

from the lesson, describe where the
Earth’s internal heat comes from. You
can add illustrations to explain your
ideas. You can also base your illustra-
tion on the image given. Write your an-
swer on your paper.

References & Photo Credits

Earth’s Internal Heat: https://ops.instructure.com/courses/10087/pages/

earths-internal-heat-source

How Heat Affects Molecules: https://www.extendednotes.com/after-school-

activities/turn-up-the-heat-4-science-experiments-exploring-heat-
energy
Earth’s Interior quiz: https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/search.php?

Earth Science certificate: https://cdn.freeprintablecertificates.net/samples-

free/Earth_Science_Achievement.png

Earthquake and Earth’s Interior: https://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/

eens1110/earthint.htm
How Hot… : https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2020/06/how-hot-is-the-center-
of-the-earth/
Image of the Earth: https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-layers-of-the-
earth-facts-composition-temperature.html
The Layers of the Earth: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sanjac-
earthscience/chapter/inside-earth/
LESSON 2 : Describe how magma is formed (magmatism)

Ready to Launch!

Have you ever wondered how magma is formed?

Magmatism is perhaps the single most critical ingredient in molding and
understanding planetary evolution. It is a direct reflection of a planet's inter-
nal thermal state and its chemical and physical constitution. On Earth, mag-
matism is closely linked to tectonism, which itself is directly linked to the
larger-scale process of thermal convection within the mantle and
core. Magma itself is a product of thermal and density instabilities within the
mantle and crust. It is primarily produced by convection through a phase
boundary, which is due to the striking differences in slopes as a function of

Aim at the Target!

At the end of this module, you will be able to:
• Describe how magma is formed

Try This!
Magma is mainly composed of the following elements. Write the name of
the element next to the color that corresponds to its legend. Use your paper
for your answers.
 Keep This in Mind!

Making Magma Viscous

This is an experiment that you can do at home to help you understand the
properties of magma. It will only take about 15 minutes, and all you need is half
a cup of water and a few tablespoons of flour.

If you’ve ever made gravy or white sauce, you’ll know how this works.

Place about 1/2 cup (125 mL) of water in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add 2 teaspoons (10 mL) of white flour (this represents silica) and stir while the
mixture comes close to boiling. It should thicken like gravy because the gluten
in the flour becomes polymerized into chains during this process.

Now you’re going to add more “silica” to see how this changes the viscosity
of your magma. Take another 4 teaspoons (20 mL)of flour and mix it thoroughly
with about 4 teaspoons (20 mL) of water in a cup and then add all of that mix-
ture to the rest of the water and flour in the saucepan. Stir while bringing it
back up to nearly boiling temperature, and then allow it to cool. This mixture
should slowly become much thicker — something like porridge — because there
is more gluten and more chains have been formed.

Analysis

This is analogous to magma. Magmas have quite variable contents of silica

and therefore have widely varying viscosities (“thicknesses”) during cooling.
Abstraction and Generalization
Magma can vary widely in composition, but in general they are made up of on-
ly eight elements; in order of importance: oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium,
sodium, magnesium, and potassium. Oxygen, the most abundant element in mag-
ma, comprises a little less than half the total, followed by silicon at just over one-
quarter. The remaining elements make up the other one-quarter. Magmas derived
from crustal material are dominated by oxygen, silicon, aluminum, sodium, and po-
tassium.

The composition of magma depends on the rock it was formed from (by melt-
ing), and the conditions of that melting. Magmas derived from the mantle have high-
er levels of iron, magnesium, and calcium, but they are still likely to be dominated
by oxygen and silicon. All magmas have varying proportions of elements such as hy-
drogen, carbon, and sulphur, which are converted into gases like water vapour, car-
bon dioxide, and hydrogen sulphide as the magma cools.

All of the igneous rocks that we see on Earth are derived from magmas that
formed from partial melting of existing rock, either in the upper mantle or the
crust. Partial melting is what happens when only some parts of a rock melt; it takes
place because rocks are not pure materials. Most rocks are made up of several min-
erals, each of which has a different melting temperature. The wax in a candle is a
pure material. If you put some wax into a warm oven (50°C will do as the melting
temperature of most wax is about 40°C) and leave it there for a while, it will soon
start to melt. That’s complete melting, not partial melting. If instead you took a mix-
ture of wax, plastic, aluminum, and glass and put it into the same warm oven, the
wax would soon start to melt, but the plastic, aluminum, and glass would not melt
(Figure 3.7a). That’s partial melting and the result would be solid plastic, aluminum,
and glass surrounded by liquid wax (Figure 3.7b). If we heat the oven up to around
120°C, the plastic would melt too and mix with the liquid wax, but the aluminum
and glass would remain solid (Figure 3.7c). Again this is partial melting. If we sepa-
rated the wax/plastic “magma” from the other components and let it cool, it would
eventually harden. As you can see from Figure 3.7d, the liquid wax and plas-
tic have mixed, and on cooling, have formed what looks like a single solid
substance. It is most likely that this is a very fine-grained mixture of solid
wax and solid plastic, but it could also be some other substance that has
formed from the combination of the two.
 Decompression Melting
Earth’s mantle is almost entirely solid rock, in spite of temperatures that
would cause rock at Earth’s surface to melt. Mantle rock remains solid at
those temperatures because the rock is under high pressure. This means that
melting can be triggered without adding heat if the rock is already hot enough,
and the pressure is reduced Melting triggered by a reduction in pressure is
called decompression melting.
Pressure is reduced when mantle rocks move upward due to convection, or
rise as a plume within the mantle. Pressure is also reduced where the crust
thins, such as along rift zones.
Flux-induced Melting
When a substance such as water is added to hot rocks, the melting
points of the minerals within those rocks decreases. If a rock is already close
to its melting point, the effect of adding water can be enough to trigger partial
melting. The added water is a flux, and this type of melting is called flux-
induced melting. Flux-induced partial melting of rock happens in subduction
zones. Minerals are transformed by chemical reactions under high pressures
and temperatures, and a by-product of those transformations is water. Rela-
tively little water is required to trigger partial melting. In laboratory studies of
the conditions of partial melting in the Japanese volcanic arc, rocks with only
0.2% of their weight consisting of water melted by up to 25%.

Partial melting of “pretend rock”: (a) the origi-

nal components of white candle wax, black
plastic pipe, green beach glass, and aluminum
wire, (b) after heating to 50˚C for 30 minutes
only the wax has melted, (c) after heating to
120˚C for 60 minutes much of the plastic has
melted and the two liquids have mixed, (d) the
liquid has been separated from the solids and
allowed to cool to make a “pretend rock” with
a different overall composition.
 In this example, we partially melted some pretend rock to create some
pretend magma. We then separated the magma from the source and allowed
it to cool to make a new pretend rock with a composition quite different
from the original material (it lacks glass and aluminum).

Partial melting in the real world isn’t exactly the same as in our pre-
tend-rock example. The main differences are that rocks are much more
complex than the four-component system we used, and the mineral compo-
nents of most rocks have more similar melting temperatures, so two or
more minerals are likely to melt at the same time to varying degrees. Anoth-
er important difference is that when rocks melt, the process takes thou-
sands to millions of years, not the 90 minutes it took in the pretend-rock
example.

Figure 3.8 Mechanisms for (a) decompression melting (the rock is

moved toward the surface) and (b) flux melting (water is added to the
rock) and the melting curve is displaced.

Why Rocks Melt?

The magma that is produced by partial melting is less dense than the
surrounding rock. Magma from partial melting of mantle rocks rises up-
ward through the mantle, and may pool at the base of the crust, or rise
through the crust. Moving magma carries heat with it, and some of that
heat is transferred to surrounding rocks. If the melting temperature of a
rock is less than the temperature of the magma, the rock will begin to
melt, and the composition of the magma may change to reflect a mixture of
sources. But adding heat is not the only way to trigger melting.
Application
(a) As a learner studying this subject, how can you encourage your friends to learn
and understand magma formation?
(b) If you are a geologist and a student asks you to describe how magma forms, how
will you answer that question?
(c) What do you think makes the Philippines the best place for volcanologists to
study magma formation and other related endogenic processes?

Reflect
Magma formation is a clear example of a process that happens in the interior of our
planet. Human beings- as a part of the Earth’s biosphere should learn and understand this
endogenic process.
Is there any significance in your life if you understand this process? If there is, ex-
press your thoughts. Write your insights on your paper.
If you will be given a chance to study Geology, what would be your driving force to pursue this
kind of profession?

Reinforcement & Enrichment

Read the excerpt from an interview with a geology student. Then prepare yourself to an-
swer the following questions. Write your answers on your pad paper.
Do you recommend studying geology? “Of course! In terms of employment opportunities, geol-
ogy is a very diverse field so there are many options to consider after graduation. There is the
industry (oil & gas, metals & mining, cement, etc.), the government (MGB, PHILVOCS, DENR,
DOST, DPWH, etc.), and the academe. The salary level is of no question, the fresh graduates are
compensated above average which may reach up to around Php 60,000 depending on the field.
For experienced employees, based on what I know from my seniors, they are among the highest
paid professionals. In fact, the geologists are the second highest paid professionals in the country
according to the 2013 data from DOLE.”. (a testimony from a Filipino geologist who graduated in
2013 from UP Diliman).
What do you think are the primary topics that you are going to learn in your first
year of study? Give 3 topics that you have ideas about.

Assess Your Learning

Briefly answer the following questions based on our discussion.
1. Explain the two ways how magma is formed.
2. What are the factors that contribute to magma formation?
3. Which component of magma is the highest and the lowest in value?
4. What is indicated by the amount of silica present in magma?
5. Describe how an igneous rock is formed.

References & Photo Credits

Magma: https://www.google.com/search?q=introduction+to+magma+formation&oq
Components: https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/3-2-magma-and-magma-formation/
Formation: https://openpress.usask.ca/physicalgeology/chapter/7-1-magma-and-how-it-forms/
Geophysics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/magmatism
Testimonials: https://www.finduniversity.ph/testimonials.aspx?maj=8
Picture of student: https://www.google.com/search?q=student+cartoon+pictures&tbm=isch&chips