Volcanoes on Earth
Planet Earth
Our Earth is the third planet in the Solar System. Scientist has found that the Earth is divided into a solid inner core (700 miles thick) and an outer liquid core (1360 miles thick) at its center. The core is overlain by another layer of less dense material called the mantle. A thin rocky crust (between 3 and 43 miles) overlays the mantle (1800 miles thick). (Rogers, Howell, et al.,180). This is the part upon which man lives. A good example to model this concept is an apple. Zeilinga de Boer and Sanders say that if an apple is sliced into two, the cross section reveals a small, circular "core" (where the seeds are), a thick "mantle" (the edible flesh), and a "crust" (the very thin skin). Those parts of the apple are relatively proportional to the main parts of the Earth. I will have students illustrate the parts of the Earth by using a peach or an egg as the physical model, which shows a more accurate correlation. Students will locate and place a copy of a labeled diagram of the Earth's structure in their cumulative science notebook.
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