Physical Geology
Textbook Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Physical Geology introduces students to the fundamental principles and processes shaping the Earth's surface and interior. The course covers topics such as the structure and composition of the Earth's layers, minerals and rocks, plate tectonics, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the dynamic forces responsible for shaping landscapes. Students will also explore natural hazards, earth resources, and the impacts of human activity on geological systems. Through a combination of lectures, laboratory exercises, and field studies, learners gain practical skills in geological observation, data collection, and interpretation, fostering a deeper understanding of Earth's ongoing physical processes.
Recommended Textbook Earth An Introduction to Physical Geology 4th Canadian Edition by Edward J. Tarbuck
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Chapter 1: An Introduction to Geology and Plate Tectonics
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Sample Questions
Q1) The ________ is thought to be the only molten, metallic portion in the Earth's interior.
A)inner core
B)lithosphere
C)mantle
D)outer core
Answer: D
Q2) The word "Geology" is derived from Greek meaning ________.
A)discourse of the Earth
B)rocks form all lands
C)the logic of rocks
D)geographic theology
Answer: A
Q3) Today, of all the continents, ________ is closest to the same geographic position it occupied during the Late Paleozoic.
A)India
B)South America
C)Australia
D)Antarctica
Answer: D
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Chapter 2: Minerals: The Building Blocks of Rocks
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Sample Questions
Q1) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)sulphides
B)oxides
C)garnets
D)halides
Answer: C
Q2) In which type of chemical bonding are electrons shared between adjacent atoms?
A)ionic
B)subatomic
C)covalent
D)isotopic
Answer: C
Q3) Optically transparent calcite exhibits the special property of "double refraction."
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) ________ oxygen ions occupy the corners of the silicon-oxygen tetrahedron.
Answer: 4
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Chapter 3: Igneous Rocks
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Sample Questions
Q1) What kind of coarse grained plutonic rock would you expect to find in the ocean crust underneath an undersea basaltic volcano?
A)granite
B)peridotite
C)diorite
D)gabbro
Answer: D
Q2) Which igneous rock or magma has the lowest silica (SiO?)content?
A)granite
B)basalt
C)andesite
D)peridotite
Answer: D
Q3) Igneous comes from the Greek word for fire.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) What is the average temperature rise below Earth's surface due to the geothermal gradient?
Answer: 25 degrees Celsius per kilometre
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Chapter 4: Volcanoes and Volcanic Processes
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are large, fairly steep-sided cones composed of lavas and pyroclastic layers?
A)composite volcanoes
B)shield
C)cinder cones
D)stratospheric
Q2) Basaltic shield volcanoes comprise the mountains of the Cascade Range.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What kind of volcano is Mount Garibaldi?
A)a basaltic cinder cone
B)a composite volcano
C)a basaltic shield volcano
D)a small, welded tuff cone
Q4) Which was the most powerful, explosive volcanic eruption of historic time?
A)Mt.Pele, Martinique, 1902
B)Vesuvius, Italy, 79 A.D.
C)Tambora, Indonesia, 1815
D)Nevado del Ruiz, Columbia, 1985
Q5) What kind of volcanic structure is Black Tusk in British Columbia?
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Chapter 5: Weathering and Soil
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best describes the process of eluviation?
A)Percolating water removes very fine-sized silt and clay particles from the A and E soil horizons.
B)buildup of calcite in the B horizon of pedocal soils
C)removal of soluble chemical constituents from the A and B soil horizons
D)feldspar decomposition and leaching of the soluble products from the C soil horizon
Q2) Weathering is considered an internal process, because it involves chemical changes in minerals.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Lateritic soils form under what climatic conditions?
A)warm and moist as in a wet, tropical forest
B)cool and relatively dry as in Nunavut
C)hot and dry as in the desert regions of North Africa and Arabia
D)moist and temperate as in southwest BC
Q4) Oxidation of iron in ferromagnesian minerals and dissolution of calcite are two examples of mechanical weathering.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 6: Sedimentary Rocks
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Sample Questions
Q1) What proportion of sedimentary rocks do the mudstones and shales comprise?
A)5%
B)25%
C)50%
D)95%
Q2) Detrital sedimentary rocks have clastic textures.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The oldest multicellular organisms from the ________ are known only as imprints and have no hard body parts for any of the fauna.
A)Azoic Acasta Gneiss
B)Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale
C)Permo-Triassic massive extinction event
D)Precambrian Ediacaran Fauna
Q4) Name at least three factors that determine the type and character of the sediments on a continental shelf.
Q5) What is the name for the chemical diagenetic change that accompanies the change from sediments to sedimentary rocks?
Q6) Name three different things we can infer from fossils in sedimentary strata.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Metamorphism and Metamorphic Rocks
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why is the regional metamorphism of ocean crust in a subduction zone considered separately from regular regional metamorphism?
A)The ocean crust has no hydrous minerals to destroy or recrystallize.
B)Both the basaltic composition and very low geothermal gradient (Low T, Hi P)are unique and lead to different facies than seen in continental rocks.
C)Unlike regular regional metamorphism, this does not occur along plate margins.
D)Because this setting does not involve any strain deformation.
Q2) Vast flat exposures of ancient metamorphic and igneous rocks are called ________.
Q3) What medium grade regional metamorphic rock is produced from shale as the parent rock?
Q4) What texture results from the alignment of abundant, coarse-grained, mica flakes in a medium grade regional metamorphic rock?
A)schistosity
B)gneissic banding
C)slaty cleavage
D)shatter cones
Q5) Where are the oldest metamorphic rocks in Canada (4.28 billion years)?
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Chapter 8: Geologic Time
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Sample Questions
Q1) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)Foraminifera
B)Coccoliths
C)Trilobites
D)Dinoflagellates
Q2) What is the Jurassic Period named after?
A)Jura Mountains between France and Switzerland
B)the Jurassic Park movies
C)19th century Canadian geologist Sir William Jurass
D)a moon of Saturn
Q3) Which of the following best characterizes an angular unconformity?
A)Tilted strata lie below the unconformity; bedding in younger strata above is parallel to the unconformity.
B)Horizontal lava flows lie below the unconformity and horizontal, sedimentary strata lie above.
C)The discordant boundary between older strata and an intrusive body of granite.
D)Igneous dykes cutting through sills at an angle.
Q4) Give an example of a fossil type and inferences about its original environment.
Q5) What is the important limitation of the K/Ar radiometric clock?
Q6) What kind of date yields numbers in years?
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Crustal Deformation
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Sample Questions
Q1) When does permanent rock deformation occur?
A)once its elastic limit is surpassed
B)only after it comes to be located on a plate margin
C)once it is completely lithified and becomes inflexible
D)when it goes on a real bender
Q2) A graben is characterized by ________.
A)a hanging wall block that has moved up between two reverse faults
B)a footwall block that has moved up between two normal faults
C)a hanging wall block that has moved down between two normal faults
D)a footwall block that has moved down between two reverse faults
Q3) Most earthquakes form a new fault where one did not exist before.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The two different sides of a dip-slip fault are called ________.
A)the boothill and the hanging valley
B)the dingwall and the dongwall
C)the footwall and the hanging wall
D)the nose banger and the toe stubber
Q5) Describe the most common way for a monocline to form.
Q6) Erosion along strike slip fault zones produces ________.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Earthquakes and Earth's Interior
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Sample Questions
Q1) How many seismograms are needed to determine the epicentral distance to an earthquake?
Q2) Briefly explain or draw and label the elastic -rebound earthquake cycle.
Q3) Why are the travel-time curves for the P-wave and S-wave arrivals curved and not straight lines?
A)The greater the distance, the deeper the P and S waves travel, refracting through progressively denser layers.
B)During an earthquake, Earth shakes so much that it is like a quivering rubber ball and all of the distances are wrong.
C)They should be straight lines.Earth is flat and the time-travel graph proves it!
D)They have to bend with the curvature of the Earth.
Q4) A ________ is one or more smaller earthquakes that sometimes precede a much larger, main earthquake event.
Q5) Some large earthquakes are preceded by smaller magnitude foreshocks.
A)True B)False
Q6) What is unusual about the seismicity of Canada's west coast, Cascadia subduction zone?
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Chapter 11: The Ocean Floor
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Q1) A(n)________ is a conical or elongate volcanic mountain, built up from the deep seafloor, but not high enough to reach the sea surface.
Q2) An atoll is a low, coral reef island typically surrounding an interior lagoon.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Name two types of sediment particles that make it to the deep sea.
Q4) The East Pacific Rise is the most intensively studied seafloor spreading centre. A)True
B)False
Q5) Satellites like SEASAT can observe the ocean using ________ to measure sealevel to +/- 2 cm and infer the seabed bathymetry from the ________ exerted by the variable elevation and mass of seabed features.
A)accelerometers, magnetism
B)infrared radiation, temperature and heat effects
C)microwave beams, gravitational pull
D)surveying telescopes, tidal pull
Q6) The continental rise lies at the top of the continental slope.
A)True
B)False
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Plate Tectonics: The Framework for Modern Geology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Pangaea began to break up in Permian time, about 500 million years ago.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The Wilson-cycle explains the long term opening and closing of ocean basins.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What important physical and chemical process occurs to subducted seafloor as it reaches a depth of 100 kilometres depth in the upper mantle?
A)It experiences nearly a doubling in its density as the subducted basalt recrystallizes to peridotite.
B)The subducted seafloor entirely melts generating a line of explosive volcanoes.
C)Heat from the surrounding mantle drives off water and other volatiles from the slab, which escape upwards, lowering the melting point of the overlying asthenospheric mantle.
D)The cooling of the ocean crust from the cold, deep ocean water of the trenches causes the subducted crust to freeze the mantle, cracking and freezing it to generate the largest earthquakes.
Q4) What is measured with GPS for measuring plate tectonic separations?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Mountain Building and Continental Frameworks
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Sample Questions
Q1) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)Andean
B)Aleutian
C)Hawaiian
D)Accretionary
Q2) The oldest rocks are about ________ and found in ________.
A)< 5000 years; Ireland and Israel
B)1.6 billion years; compressional mountain belts on continental margins
C)1.7-1.9 billion years; island arcs within the western Pacific
D)3.5 billion years; continental shield areas, deep within continents
Q3) India was rifted from Antarctica about 130 million years ago, drifted northwards throughout the Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic, to finally crash into Asia 10 million years ago.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Name a sedimentary basin formed in response to the erosion of the Appalachians.
Q5) In what two notable ways do continent-continent collisions differ from other destructive plate margins?
Q6) Fault-block mountains occur in regions dominated by ________ faulting.
Q7) What kind of a mountain belt is the Canadian Rockies?
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Chapter 14: Mass Wasting: The Work of Gravity
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Sample Questions
Q1) How did First Nations people refer to Turtle Mountain near Frank, Alberta before the 1903 slide?
Q2) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)scarp
B)slump block
C)rupture surface
D)translation surface
Q3) Slumps are a common form of mass wasting particularly in ________.
A)angular rocky rubble on steep bedrock slopes
B)cohesive water saturated unconsolidated soils and clayey sediments
C)fluidized debris in steep canyons
D)granular sands and gravels
Q4) How can rock slopes be stabilized against rockslides?
Q5) What term denotes the exposed slip (fracture)surface beneath a slump block?
A)scoop
B)sole
C)toe
D)scarp
Q6) What two types of mass wasting move essentially by sliding down a planar or curviplanar slope along an underlying fixed surface?
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Running Water
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which component of the hydrologic cycle describes the recharge of water to the soil and groundwater systems?
Q2) Most precipitation in land areas originates by transpiration and by evaporation from lakes and rivers.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Where would you find clays and silts in delta sediments?
A)bottomset beds
B)distributary channels
C)foreset beds
D)topset beds
Q4) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)infiltration
B)sublimation
C)runoff
D)transpiration
Q5) Wind gaps are abandoned water gaps where stream piracy has occurred.
A)True
B)False
Q6) ________ flow is how runoff moves initially across the ground.
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Chapter 16: Groundwater
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Sample Questions
Q1) Yosemite National Park in California is world famous for its hot springs, geysers, and other geothermal phenomena.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Briefly explain what allows a geyser to periodically erupt rather than slowly flowing as a hot spring?
Q3) Can ground water ever act as an erosional agent or as a solvent? Explain.
Q4) Under most conditions, groundwater moves ________.
A)very quickly as it flows predominantly in open cavernous underground rivers
B)only between rainstorms by drainage
C)very little as most of it is stagnant and all at a single level
D)at slow but variable rates generally less than a few metres per day
Q5) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)porosity
B)permeability
C)aquitard
D)aquifer
Q6) What are the important factors according to Darcy's Law for determining the velocity of groundwater flow?
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Glaciers and Glaciation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Prior to its sudden emptying down the St.Lawrence around 11,000 years ago, ________ was the largest lake in North America.
A)Great Bear Lake
B)Lake Agassiz
C)Maligne Lake
D)Lake Winnipeg
Q2) Which of the following is the correct listing of the classical North American glacial stages from oldest to youngest?
A)Indianan, Kansan, Nebraskan, Ohioan
B)Kansan, llinoian, Iowan, Dakotan
C)Nebraskan, Indianan, Illinoian, Wisconsinan
D)Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoian, Wisconsinan
Q3) Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.
A)drumlin
B)kame
C)kettle
D)esker
Q4) The upper 50 metres or so of a glacier is known as the zone of ________.
Q5) Why is stratified drift composed mainly of coarse sand and gravel?
Q6) What happens to global sea level during ice ages and why?
Page 19
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Chapter 18: Deserts and Winds
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Sample Questions
Q1) What type of transport load does a stream carry that wind does not?
Q2) ________ dunes are long, high, sand dunes parallel with the prevailing wind direction.
A)Subliminal
B)Longitudinal
C)Latitudinal
D)Transvestual
Q3) Which one of the following will effectively limit further deflation in a desert area?
A)sea level
B)desert pavement
C)the water table
D)the repose level
Q4) Canada's only non-polar desert occurs in the southern Okanagan Valley of British Columbia.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is a short-lived desert stream called?
Q6) What is the source of the water that maintains desert rivers like the Nile, Colorado, or Syr Darya?
Page 20
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Chapter 19: Shorelines
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the wave base?
A)Water depth equal to 1/2 the distance between successive waves
B)Wave height equal to 1/2 the distance between successive waves
C)The minimum elevation of a wave before it will start to curl
D)The distance up the shore where waves can erode
Q2) Abrasion will be greatest in which part of the beach environment?
A)Offshore Zone
B)Surf Zone
C)Backshore
D)Berms
Q3) Name the three components of a profile across a shoreline into the sea.
Q4) Which active landform is most common along the Texas-Gulf of Mexico coast?
A)barrier islands
B)deltas
C)sea stacks
D)sombreros
Q5) The effect of the Sun on tides is less than that of the Moon.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What are rip currents?
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Chapter 20: Mineral and Energy Resources
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Sample Questions
Q1) ________ is the term for a south-facing window that allows objects in a room to absorb solar energy and re-emit it as heat energy.
A)Passive solar collector
B)South solar reflector
C)Glass solar screen
D)Clear solar pane
Q2) Heavy oil sand deposits are actually broken up shale beds impregnated with viscous, crude oil.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following is not a mine site for metallic mineral deposits?
A)Athabasca, Alberta
B)Endako, British Columbia
C)Flin Flon, Saskatchewan
D)Buchans, Newfoundland and Labrador
Q4) Briefly outline the pros and cons of alternate energy sources such as nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric.
Q5) Name two metals or minerals found in vein or disseminated deposits associated with intermediate to felsic intrusions.
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