1. Earth’s Innards (Sounds more genteel than guts…!)

2. Have you ever tried to dig to China?

3. How far did you get? Do you think anyone could journey to the center of the earth?

4. This well is about 4 meters deep – I bet you didn’t get this far!

5. The deepest known cave is just over 2 kilometers deep
The deepest known cave is just over 2 kilometers deep. (Krubera Cave in Abkhazia, Georgia.)

6. The deepest mine in the world is the Tau Tona gold mine in South Africa. It is 3.8 kilometers deep.

7. But we have still barely scratched the surface!!!!
We can DRILL deeper than we can dig. Oil drills reach from 5 to 8 kilometers deep!
But we have still barely scratched the surface!!!!

8. So how deep is it anyway???
12, 742 km
This is the average diameter of the earth. (It is not a perfect sphere.) How deep would you have to drill just to get to the center? (Hint: Halfway through!)

9. (It is really hard to drill that deep!)
The deepest hole drilled into Earth is the Kola Peninsula Superdeep Borehole in Russia - - the plan was to reach the mantle. After 19 years, they had only gotten 12, 262 meters deep!
Then they had to give up.
(It is really hard to drill that deep!)
How much deeper would
you need to drill to make
it all the way to the center
of the earth?
How about all the way
through to the
other side?
Find out more at this link: (Optional, of course!)

10. This hole is deeper than the Kola Borehole, but it is through oceanic crust:
Exxon, the world's largest oil company, has completed drilling the world's deepest well in the Chayvo oil field on the Sakhalin Shelf in the Russian Far East. The shaft of well Z-44 is 12,376 meters deep — the equivalent of 15 times the height of the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

11. But as deep as all those holes, seem, they have barely scratched the surface!
Watch this video to put things into perspective:

12. Think of how thin an apple skin is:
The earth’s crust is even thinner compared to the rest of the earth than the apple skin is compared to the rest of the apple!

13. It’s actually so thin compared to the rest that it’s more like an onion.
Like an ogre!

14. You have learned about the three main layers of the earth:
Like an ogre!
C’mon, Shrek! It’s not always about you!

15. But now we can see it’s a little more complicated than that:

16. Even though we won’t be digging to China, we’ll be learning lots of cool stuff about the earth!

17. ~ Home Sweet Home ~