Tuesday, November 22nd Brain Pop Pencil/Eraser Continental Drift Notes DAILY AGENDA REQUIRED MATERIALS Brain Pop Continental Drift Notes Pencil/Eraser Science Binder

ARIZONA STATE SCIENCE STANDARDS: GRADE LEVEL 7 Continental Drift ARIZONA STATE SCIENCE STANDARDS: GRADE LEVEL 7 Strand 6: Earth and Space Science Concept 2: Earth’s Processes and Systems Understand the processes acting on the Earth and their interaction with the Earth systems. PO 3. Analyze the evidence that lithospheric plate movements occur. PO 4. Explain lithospheric plate movement as a result of convection.

Continental Drift DAILY OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to understand how Earth changed over a long period of time

Continental Drift Lab

Continental Drift The idea that the continents move very slowly across Earth’s surface; the hypothesis was proposed by Alfred Wegener. 250 million years ago, Earth’s continents were once joined in a single landmass The continents gradually drifted apart to where they are today

Alfred Wegener In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the hypothesis of continental drift to explain why the edges of the continents looked as though they could fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Pangaea Wegener thought that millions of years ago, all of the continents had formed one large landmass called Pangaea. Pangaea broke apart to become the continents we have today.

Fossil Evidence To support his continental drift hypothesis, Wegener collected fossils from the time of Pangaea He found the same plant and animal fossils on the coastlines of different continents

Climate Evidence Some rocks located in warm climates today were deposited by glaciers about 300 million years ago South Africa has evidence that it was once covered by ice.

Geologic Evidence Rock types and mountain ranges match up across the continents when they are arranged to form Pangaea. Continents look like they could be part of a giant jigsaw puzzle

Hypothesis Rejected Despite the evidence, scientists did not accept Wegener’s explanation of the forces that could cause continental drift They couldn’t think of a force that was strong enough to move continents. They were WRONG!!!