Monday, December 08, 2008

Quotes from essays on supercontinents

Thankfully (I think) these are not all from one paper. Not included are the ones that rambled about steam from climate change influencing continents and imagery describing boxes of cheezits out onto a table being similar to plate tectonics...

"The reason our continents are the way they are is because an asteroid hasn't hit us. This is just my idea, but a asteroid has destroyed the earlier super continents, what makes our regular continents so different. It is said that one day Greenland will hit Iceland if I remember correctly."

"While seafloors are expanding, abyssal plains are contracting into the earth's mantle because of gravity."

"The erosion processes that took place along the plate boundaries of the continents had made them drift away from one another by the force of the sun and gravity."

"Some scientists think that land masses break up and orbit the globe before getting back together again..."

"The supercontinent cycles has been theorized to have been going on for 40 billion years."

"Since the hypothesis states that when these super continents were formed and broken up by heat underneath them, then isn't that what's going to happen? When of if the ice melted, the surface would become much hotter, and the core would seem as if it were hotter because the ice was gone to cool the top. With all of this heat coming from both directions, would greatly weaken all of the rock underneath and on top of the continents, then maybe the drifting would occur..."

This one frightened and confused me, so it's a long quote - read at your own risk!

"So how did the supercontinent really separate? I believe over the years of construction and destruction of the world then was what we call weathering and erosion today. The colder it got the moisture of the ground changed due to water. Volcanoes played the heat factor and we all know if you take a lot of water to wet the ground it creates mud, and then if then subject the mud to extreme heat it creates cracks in the ground and in my opinion that's kind of what happened just a bigger boom effect. The cracks were so severe it separated the ground and that's how we gotten the smaller continents. Once the Earth's moisture stabilized the continents merged back into the bigger continent known as Pangea. However, it happened again but the last time the Earth's atmosphere never stabilized so the huge continent stayed separated, and the world has been changing ever since..."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear geology god,

I bequeath thee today for the part marks that I have endeavored to collect by my non-specific flatulent aphorisms.

Sincerely,
Student.

Anonymous said...

I think that last one is poised to be president some day...
by the way, I get the coolest word verifications on your site. 'Wirepong'.
Neat

Heather

Smiley Kylie said...

a Co-worker wanted to know what grade and whos class these answers came from. When I said College Students she was floor. She totally thought they were from some of our forth or fifth graders. hahaha.

Anonymous said...

Prime examples why many leave teaching alltogether.....
I feel your pain

Anonymous said...

Please tell me that your class is compulsory... Surely no student who elected to take it would come up with disheartening and disturbing answers such as these. My mind is now goo.

gnat said...

Um, well it's not exactly "required"... students are required to take a science class with a lab, and that can be mine, or physics, or chemistry, or environmental... so yeah - the irony is that they can't take the lab if they don't pass the class... so...

Anonymous said...

Hey, that was my answer, but I messed up... I didn't mean 40 billion, I meant 4 000, because that's what the Bible says.

Also, I don't believe in dinosaurs.

bek said...

These were hilarious (from the perspective of not marking them)! ... although when I marked my class last Spring it was rather disheartening how little sunk in...