Frenzie Mae V.

Rivera BSMT -4AN

Assignment in Geography January 8, 2013

Atmosphere
It is the mixture of gases surrounding any celestial object that has a gravitational field strong enough to prevent the gases from escaping; especially the gaseous envelope of Earth. It comes from the word atmo which means gas or vapor. The principal constituents of the atmosphere of Earth are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent). The atmospheric gases in the remaining 1 percent are argon (0.93 percent), carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), varying amounts of water vapor, and trace amounts of hydrogen, ozone, methane, carbon monoxide, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon. The atmosphere gives man air, water, heat, and protects him against harmful rays of the sun and against meteorites. This layer around the earth is a colorless, odorless, tasteless sea of gases, water and fine dust.

Weather
It is the state of the atmosphere at a particular time and place. The elements of weather include temperature, humidity, cloudiness, precipitation, wind, and pressure.

Climate
It is the the long-term effect of the sun's radiation on the rotating earth's varied surface and atmosphere. It can be understood most easily in terms of annual or seasonal averages of temperature and precipitation.

Planets
These are round bodies in space that orbit a star. To be a planet, a body must be big enough to settle into a rounded shape from the inward pull of its own gravitation. A planet shines by reflecting light and not by releasing nuclear energy the way a star does. Our solar system has eight major planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptuneand a number of small, dwarf planets, including Pluto, Eris, and Ceres. A planet-like body that revolves around a larger planet is called a satellite or moon rather than a planet. Planets are distinct from asteroids and comets, smaller bodies that also orbit stars.

Solar System
Solar System refers to the Sun and everything that orbits the Sun, including the planets and their satellites; the dwarf planets, asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects, and comets; and interplanetary dust and gas. The term may also refer to a group of celestial bodies orbiting another star.

*Kuiper Belt (KY-per) - a collection of frozen objects made of ice, dust, and rock that orbit the Sun in the outer solar system. The belt extends from just beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune to well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Different features and structures of the earth on the lives of the people
The behaviors of man depend on the physical elements in its backdrop. Man has learned to either control or modify some of them. The different features and structures of the earth give limitation to man upon his activities. He may not alter everything about the physical elements around him, yet, he may develop ways on how to adapt to certain physical elements. The ways of life of a man depends on the environment and the resources he is living in. His way of life depends on the available resources in his living environment.

The Suns gravity on the planets in our solar system

The suns gravitational pull keeps the planets from sailing out into space as they revolve around the sun in their particular orbits. The general physical law of gravity states that any particles of matter attract each other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This means that if two heavenly bodies are big and near each other, the gravitational pull between them is strong. Since the sun has a mass so many times greater than that of any of the planets, it exercises strong attraction upon them and thus retains them within the system of which the sun is the center.

Convection Current
Convection currents are currents caused by the expansion of a liquid, solid, or gas - as its temperature increases, the colder, denser material sinks. Convection currents arise in the atmosphere above warm land masses or seas, giving rise to sea breezes and land breezes, respectively. Convection currents in the hot, solid rock of the Earth's mantle help to drive the movement of the rigid plates making up the Earth's surface. Convection can be qualified in terms of being natural, forced, gravitational, granular, or thermomagnetic. Due to its role in heat transfer, natural convection plays a role in the structure of Earth's atmosphere, its oceans, and its mantle. Mantle convection is the slow creeping motion of Earth's rocky mantle caused by convection currents carrying heat from the interior of the earth to the surface. It is the driving force that causes tectonic plates to move around the Earth's surface. The Earth's surface is divided into a number of tectonic plates that are continuously being created and consumed at their opposite plate boundaries. Creation (accretion) occurs as mantle is added to the growing edges of a plate. This hot added material cools down by conduction and convection of heat. At the consumption edges of the plate, the material has thermally contracted to become dense, and it sinks under its own weight in the process of subduction at an ocean trench. This subducted material sinks to some depth in the Earth's interior where it is prohibited from sinking further. The subducted oceanic crust triggers volcanism.