Science 10

Science – Grade 10
Quarter 1 – Module 13: Earth’s Mechanism
First Edition, 2020

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Published by the Department of Education Division of Pasig City

Development Team of the Self-Learning Module

Writer: Rowena O. Roa, PhD
Editor: Rosalina B. Piamonte
Reviewers: Rosalina B. Piamonte
Glenda B. Mira
Illustrator: Edison P. Clet
Layout Artist: Mark Kihm G. Lara
Management Team: Ma. Evalou Concepcion A. Agustin
OIC-Schools Division Superintendent
Aurelio G. Alfonso EdD
OIC-Assistant Schools Division Superintendent
Victor M. Javeña EdD
Chief, School Governance and Operations Division and
OIC-Chief, Curriculum Implementation Division

Education Program Supervisors

Librada L. Agon EdD (EPP/TLE/TVL/TVE)

Liza A. Alvarez (Science/STEM/SSP)
Bernard R. Balitao (AP/HUMSS)
Joselito E. Calios (English/SPFL/GAS)
Norlyn D. Conde EdD (MAPEH/SPA/SPS/HOPE/A&D/Sports)
Wilma Q. Del Rosario (LRMS/ADM)
Ma. Teresita E. Herrera EdD (Filipino/GAS/Piling Larang)
Perlita M. Ignacio PhD (EsP)
Dulce O. Santos PhD (Kindergarten/MTB-MLE)
Teresita P. Tagulao EdD (Mathematics/ABM)

Printed in the Philippines by Department of Education – Schools Division of

Pasig City
Science 10
Quarter 1
Self-Learning Module 13
Earth’s Mechanism
Introductory Message

For the Facilitator:

Welcome to the Science Grade 10 Self-Learning Module on Earth’s Mechanism!

This Self-Learning Module was collaboratively designed, developed and

reviewed by educators from the Schools Division Office of Pasig City headed by its
Officer-in-Charge Schools Division Superintendent, Ma. Evalou Concepcion A.
Agustin, in partnership with the City Government of Pasig through its mayor,
Honorable Victor Ma. Regis N. Sotto. The writers utilized the standards set by the K
to 12 Curriculum using the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELC) in
developing this instructional resource.

This learning material hopes to engage the learners in guided and independent
learning activities at their own pace and time. Further, this also aims to help learners
acquire the needed 21st century skills especially the 5 Cs, namely: Communication,
Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Character while taking into
consideration their needs and circumstances.

In addition to the material in the main text, you will also see this box in the
body of the module:

Notes to the Teacher

This contains helpful tips or strategies that
will help you in guiding the learners.

As a facilitator you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this
module. You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing them to
manage their own learning. Moreover, you are expected to encourage and assist the
learners as they do the tasks included in the module.
 For the Learner:

Welcome to the Science 10 Self-Learning Module on Earth’s Mechanism!

This module was designed to provide you with fun and meaningful
opportunities for guided and independent learning at your own pace and time. You
will be enabled to process the contents of the learning material while being an active
learner.

This module has the following parts and corresponding icons:

Expectations - This points to the set of knowledge and skills

that you will learn after completing the module.

Pretest - This measures your prior knowledge about the lesson

at hand.

Recap - This part of the module provides a review of concepts

and skills that you already know about a previous lesson.

Lesson - This section discusses the topic in the module.

Activities - This is a set of activities that you need to perform.

Wrap-Up - This section summarizes the concepts and

application of the lesson.

Valuing - This part integrates a desirable moral value in the

lesson.

Posttest - This measures how much you have learned from the
entire module.
 EXPECTATIONS
This module is designed and written to help you master the lesson on the
possible causes of plate movement. It has prepared to provide activities for
reinforcement, strengthening and enriching knowledge and skills. The skills in this
module cover all the most essential learning competencies in the list issued by the
Department of Education.
This module uses different and interesting approaches, strategies, and
techniques to further hone scientific understanding of the learners. This module
will focus solely in the Earth’s Mechanism.
At the end of the learning module, you are expected to:
1. describe and simulate seafloor spreading;
2. illustrate the convection current within the mantle that could possible affect
plate movement; and
3. recognize the importance of seafloor spreading to the plate movement.
.

PRETEST

DIRECTION: Read carefully and understand each sentences then choose the
best answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper.
1. Which of the following causes Earth's tectonic plates to move?
A. Energy from the Sun
B. Magnetic Pole Reversal
C. Faults in Mountain Ranges
D. Convection currents in the mantle
2. At mid-ocean ridges, molten material (magma) rises from the mantle and
erupts as fissure volcanoes. The molten material then spreads out, pushing
older rock to both sides of the ridges. This process is called?
A. Sink holes
B. Subduction zones
C. Sea-Floor spreading
D. Divergent subduction
3. Which of the following objects best represents the movement that occurs
during sea-floor spreading?
A. Elevator
B. Conveyor belt
C. Roller coaster
D. Hot air balloon
4. Which of the following boundary a seafloor spreading occur?
A. China Plate and the Philippine Plate
B. Nazca Plate and South American Plate
C. Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate
 D. North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate.
5. How does seafloor spreading process affect the human activities?
A. It influence fossils.
B. It influence sea levels.
C. It influence new crust.
D. It influence paleoclimates.

RECAP

In your Grade 8 Science, you have learned the different types of plate
boundary. Can you still remember how they differ from each other? Let’s have some
practice exercises to refresh your mind.

Let’s look at the pictures are you familiar with this types of plate boundaries?

LESSON

Have you experience a mountain hiking, stand on its peak and look around
it. Do you think it looks exactly the same as before? Maybe you would think and
imagine that it might be different 10 years ago or a 100 million years ago.

The concept about the moving of lithospheric plates has gained popularity
over time. Yet, some are skeptical on the validity of the plate tectonics. Despite the
evidences presented by Alfred Wegener in 1912, He did not receive appreciation on
his work as even after his death in 1930; He wasn’t able to explain how this drifting
took place. This made scientists conduct further studies on how plates are move.

During 1960’s, new technologies used by the scientists to make a great

observations about the ocean floor. They use sonars and submersibles, they have
discovered features of the ocean. They found a system of ridges or mountains in the
seafloor similar to those found in the continents. These are called mid-ocean ridges.
Mid-Atlantic Ridge an undersea mountain chain in the Atlantic Ocean. It has a cleft
about 32-48 km long and 1.6 km deep. The ridge is offset by fracture zones or rift
valleys. It is a divergent or constructive plate boundary located along the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world.
 Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Source: sciencemag.org
Figure 1. Mid-Atlantic Ridge

The idea that the seafloor itself moves and also carries the continents with it
as it spreads from a central rift axis was proposed by Harold Hammond
Hess from Princeton University and Robert Dietz of the U.S. Naval Electronics
Laboratory in San Diego in the 1960s.

Seafloor spreading is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where

new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves
away from the ridge.

Figure 2. Seafloor Spreading

A new ocean crust is found around the rift valley, while the oldest ocean crust
is found in trench at a subduction zone.

Figure 3. Diagram of Seafloor Spreading

Divergent Boundaries are where two plates are moving in the opposite
directions. Rising magma is pushing apart and adding new crust. This is known as
Rifting.

Findings that support Seafloor Spreading Theory:

a. Rocks are younger at the Mid-ocean ridge.
b. Rocks from the mid-ocean ridge are older.
c. Sediments are thinner at the ridge.
d. Rocks at the ocean floor are younger that those at the continents.
Magnetic Reversal
What is magnetic reversal? How does magnetic reversal prove seafloor spreading?
How does magnetic reversal happen? Magnetic reversal is also called magnetic flip of
the Earth. It happens when the North Pole is transformed into a South Pole and the
South Pole becomes the North Pole. This is due to the change in the direction of flow
in the outer core. Magnetic patterns found in volcanic rocks, especially those
recovered from the ocean floor. In the past 10 million years, there have been, on
average, 4 to 5 reversals per million years.
Seafloor spreading was strengthened with the discovery that magnetic rocks
near ridge follow the pattern aside from the fact that rocks near the ridge are younger
than those farther from the ridge.

Figure 4. Magnetic Polarity Time Scale

The Diagram illustrating the formation of magnetic anomaly “stripes” at the
mid-ocean ridges. As the plates move apart at the spreading ridge, magma is injected
beneath the ridge where it cools and records the direction of the magnetic field at
that time. As time goes on, the magnetic field changes its polarity and this is
recorded in the new magma emplaced at the ridge axis.

CONVECTION CURRENT
Convection currents form because a heated fluid expands, becoming less
dense. The less-dense heated fluid rises away from the heat source. As it rises, it
pulls cooler fluid down to replace it. In places where convection currents rise up
towards the crust's surface, tectonic plates move away from each other in a process
known as seafloor spreading.

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/deepearth/visualizations/mantle_conv.html
Figure 5. Convection Current in the Mantle
The convection currents rotate very slowly, as they move and drag the plates
along. Because of convection current, the tectonic plates are able to move slowly
along tectonic boundaries, pushing each other, sliding past each other and drifting
away from each other. This process is further illustrate in figure 7.
To ponder our understanding. Let us now proceed to our activity for us to
learn more about our Earth’s Mechanism. Are you ready?
 ACTIVITIES
Module No. 13: Activity No. 1: Split and Separate! (Adapted)
Learning Competency:
Describe the possible causes of plate movement. S10ES-Ia-j-36.5
Learning Objective:
• Describe and simulate seafloor spreading process. S10ES-Ia-j-36.5.1
• Realize the importance of the seafloor spreading process.
Materials: activity sheet, used folder, bond paper, colored pencil, ruler, scissors
Procedure:
1. Using a colored pencil, draw stripes across one sheet of bond paper parallel to
the short sides of the paper. The stripes should vary in spacing and thickness.
2. Fold the bond paper in half lengthwise.
3. Write the word “Start” at the top of both halves
of the paper. It should look like the figure on
the right.
4. Cut the bond paper in half along the dashed
line to form two strips.
5. Take the board paper and make three (3) 11-
cm long slits as indicated in the illustration.
6. The two slits near the edges of the bond paper
should be both 11-cm from the center slit.
7. Put the two striped strips of paper together so
that the “Start” labels touch one another.
8. Insert the strips up through the center slit,
then pull them toward the side slits.
9. Insert the ends of the strips into the side slits.
Pull the ends of the strips as shown in the
figure below and watch what happens at the
center slit.
10. Practice pulling the strips through the slits
until you can make the stripes come up and go
down at the
Guide same time.
Questions:

Guide Question:
1. What do the stripes in the paper represent?
2. What does the middle slit represent? What occurs in this region?
3. What is the role of mid-ocean ridge in the movement of lithospheric plates?
4. How does the new seafloor form at the mid-ocean ridge?
5. What do you called the process happen at the side of slit?
Closure:

Based on the activity, Is the Earth getting larger and wider when plates drift
away from each other?
Module No 13 : Activity No. 2 : Magnetic Reversals and Sea Floor Striping
Learning Competency:
Describe the possible causes of plate movement. S10ES-Ia-j-36.5
Learning Objective:
• Analyze a magnetic polarity map.
• Use legends and scales of the map properly.
Materials: activity sheet, ball pen, polarity map
Procedure:
Figure 1 shows the ocean floor around a spreading ridge. On the map, rocks with
reverse magnetic polarity are represented by white bands and those with normal
polarity by gray bands.

Figure 1
On the map:
a. Identify and label the features identified by A and B on the west side of the
ridge.
b. Along the top of the figure, label the normal (N) magnetic anomalies to the
east of the ridge N1, N2, N3, etc., with N1 closest the ridge.
c. Along the top of the figure, label the reverse (R) magnetic anomalies east of
the ridge R1, R2, R3, etc., with R1 closest the ridge.
d. Draw a magnetic north arrow on each anomaly east of the ridge. (Hint: Don’t
forget the difference in the meaning of north for normal and reverse anomalies.)
e. Mark each anomaly (white or gray band) on the east side of the ridge with the
length of time it represents using the data from Table 1.
f. Label the age of each isochron (solid line) at the bottom of the right-hand side
of the map using the information recorded on your ocean-floor map.

Guide Questions:
1. How far do the plates move away from each other every year?
2. What was Earth’s magnetic field normal or reversed 65 million years ago?
3. How would the history of reversals show itself on the ocean floor?
Closure:
Based on the activity, Can you be able to predict the next reversal would occur?

WRAP-UP
To summarize what have you learned, answer the following. Fill in the blanks
to complete the sentence. Choose from the words in the box.
 Oceans Subduction Mid-ocean ridges Ocean floor Conveyor belts

Sonar Mantle Magma Seafloor spreading Deep-ocean trenches

The longest chain of mountains in the world is the system of (1)

__________________. In the mid-1900s, scientists mapped the mid-ocean ridges using
(2)_______________. Earth’s ocean floors move like (3) _____________, carrying the
continents along with them. At a mid-ocean ridge, molten material rises from the (4)
_____________ and erupts. As the (5)___________cools, it forms a strip of solid rock
that form before, pushing it aside. This process, called (6) __________, continually
adds new material to the (7) ___________.

The ocean floor does not just keep spreading. Instead. It sinks beneath deep
underwater canyons called (8) ________________. Where there are trenches,
subduction takes place. (9)____________ is the process by which the ocean floor sinks
beneath a deep-ocean trench and back into the mantle. The processes of subduction
and seafloor spreading can change the size and shape of the (10) ___________.

VALUING

If convection current is not present in our mantle what will happen? Earth
stopped that would be a natural disaster. The amount of heat which the sun radiates
at us sets the temperature of the Earth’s surface. So if convection completely stopped
the high and low temperatures would force people and animals to move away from
the poles and equator.
To know more about this, do Activity # 3.

Module No 13: Activity No. 3: CONVECTION CURRENT AND THE MANTLE

Learning Competency:
Describe the possible causes of plate movement. S10ES-Ia-j-36.5
Learning Objective:
• Recognize the importance of the creation of convection current underneath
the earth.
Materials: activity sheet, ball pen
Procedure:
The diagram below shows a convection cell in Earth’s mantle. A convection cell is
one complete loop of a convection current. Use the diagram to answer the guide
questions, Put your answer on a separate sheet of paper.
 Guide Questions:
1. Where does the heat come from that drives this convection current in the mantle?
2. Where is the temperature of the mantle material greater, at point A or point B?
Explain why.
3. Where is the density of the material greater, at point B or point C?
Explain why.
4. What causes the convection cell to turn to the left at point B?
5. How do you think this convection cell might affect the crust material above it?
Closure:
Based on the lesson, why is mantle convection important? How does it work
in the mantle? If convection current is not present in the earth’s mantle, Will we still
have the pandemic COVID 19?

POSTTEST

DIRECTION: Read carefully and understand each sentence then choose the best
answer. Write the chosen letter on a separate sheet of paper

1. If new ocean crust is found around the rift valley, where do you find the oldest
crust?
A. Rift Valley
B. Mid Ocean Ridges
C. Magma recycle center
D. Trench at a Subduction Zone
2. The rocks on the ocean floor show evidence that the magnetism alternates north
and south as you move along the sea-floor. This evidence of sea-floor spreading
is reflected in the rocks on the ocean floor. The name for this evidence is called?
A. Plate motion
B. Magnetic Reversals
C. Crustal subtraction
D. magnetic solidification
3. Youngest oceanic crust is found at the Mid-Ocean Ridge. Age gets progressively
older as you get farther from the mid-ocean ridge. Why is the Earth not
expanding in size?
A. The older ocean crust is weathered and eroded away.
B. The older crust is being recycled at subduction zones.
C. Deposition of the older crust decreases the mass of earth.
 D. The mid ocean ridge is becoming so large that it is consuming the older
the crust.
4. Below is a picture of sea-floor spreading. How are the ocean crusts moving?

A. Converging
B. Diverging
C. Sliding
D. No movement
5. What is the classification of the rock being formed at a rift valley?

A. Foliated
B. Igneous
C. Metamorphic
D. Sedimentary
 KEY TO CORRECTION

References
https://www.earthlearningidea.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridge_push
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35204554
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mittelozeanischer_Ruecken_-
_Schema.png
https://www.civilsdaily.com/mains/explain-the-mechanism-of-sea-floor-
spreading-and-briefly-mention-the-characteristic-features-of-the-mid-atlantic-
ridge-15-marks/
https://opentextbc.ca/geology/chapter/10-5-mechanisms-for-plate-motion/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Ridge_Push_%28Mid-
ocean_Ridge%29.png
https://www.playmeo.com/activities/ice-breakers-get-to-know-you-
games/making-connections/
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ELINETTE B. DELA CRUZ

Project Development Officer II
(LRMS)
Mark Kihm G. Lara
Lay-out Artist

Rowena O. Roa, PhD

Video/Power Point Presenter

Rosalina B. Piamonte
Video/Power Point Editor

Rosalina B. Piamonte
Video/Power Point Reviewer

Richard T. Santos
Sta. Lucia High School
Principal II

Dr. Sofia J. Papio

Public Schools District Supervisor

For inquiries or feedback, please write or call:

Department of Education – Schools Division Office of Pasig City

Caruncho Avenue, San Nicholas, Pasig City

Contact No.: (632) 8641-8885

Email Address: divisionofpasig@gmail.com