You are on page 1of 4

What Are the Layers of the Earth?

Whats inside the earth? Create a craft or bake a cake that will help you dig deep into
the mysteries of the earths interior.
First, its time for a short geology lesson. The earth has four layers. The top layer is
the one we live on, and its called the crust . The crust is like the crunchy outside of a
loaf of bread, except that your bread probably doesnt have trees living on it. The
crust is made out of lighter rocks such as granite. All of the rocks, streams,
mountains, and beaches where we see rocks are all part of the crust. The crust is
fairly small when its compared to the other layers of the earth. Its only 3 to 5 miles
deep under the oceans and about 25 miles deep on land. The earths crust is not a
smooth coating on the earth, but its made out of plates that move around. When the
plates move against each other, it causes earthquakes.
The second layer of the earth is just below the crust. Its called the mant le. The
mantle is very thick: 1800 miles deep. The mantle is a little bit like a sandwich. On the top and bottom parts of the
mantle, the rock doesnt move very much. In the middle of the mantle is the ast henosphere. This part of the
mantle moves around fairly slowly. This moving mantle layer pushes the earths plates around.
Next is the core of the earth. The out er core is very hot. It can be up to 9000 degrees F! Inside the outer core,
metals such as iron and nickel move around as liquids.
The inner core of the earth is the center of the earth. All of the rocks on the outside press down on the inside.
The rocks in the core vibrate and are squeez ed together by the other layers. This layer is not as thick as the
other inner layers of the earth. Its 800 miles thick.

Problem:
Create a model of the Earths layers.

Mat erials
Compass White paper
Stapler
Yellow, orange, red, blue, and green modeling clay
Yellow, orange, red, blue, and green pieces of construction paper
Cake mixes (1 white, 1 yellow, 1 red velvet)
Cake pans
Blue and green food dye
White icing
2 bowls
Spoon
Oven

Procedure
1. To help you understand all of the layers, draw a picture of the siz e of the different layers. Using a compass
to help you draw different siz es of circles, draw a very thin crust, the upper mantle, the lower mantle, a thick
outer core, and a smaller inner core.
Crust: Up to 25 miles
Upper mantle: 225 miles
Lower mantle: 1280 miles
Transition between lower mantle and outer core: 700 miles

Outer core: 14 00 miles


Inner core: 800 miles
2. To figure out the relative siz es of each layer, youll need to do some math. Lets take the crust as one unit
of measurement and compare everything else to that. The crust is 25 miles deep. The upper mantle is 225
divided by 25, which is 9. This means that the upper mantle will be nine times thicker than the crust. Do this
for each item in the list above, and you will get an understanding of how thick or thin each layer needs to be.
If each 25-mile section is 1 inch thick, how many inches will the thickest layer be? How small does the
thickest layer need to be so that your drawing doesnt extend off the paper? Remember that this is never
exact. In some places, the crust is thin, while in other places it is thicker. It is thicker under the continents and
thinner under the ocean.
3. Now lets dive into the fun part: building a model of the earths layers! You can use a number of different
materials to build a model of the earth. One of the easiest is modeling clay. Use different colors of modeling
clay to create a half-sphere of the earth. This will allow you to see inside and look at the layers. Using the
dimensions youve calculated above, start by making the small inner core. Add layers in the correct
thickness, starting from the inside and working toward the outside. Build this layered ball of clay and cut it in
half to see a cross-section of the layers at the end. You can treat the mantle as a single section, or add
more layers of clay to show the different sections of the mantle.
4 . Create an earth book! Make a circle that represents the core of the earth. For each layer, add on the depth
of that layer to the circle that youve already made, then cut out that new, larger circle. For example, the inner
core is 800 miles and the outer core in 14 00 miles, so the two together make a 2200-mile circle. When
youve cut out circles for each of the layers of the earth, place the largest one at the bottom and stack up all
of the layers, placing the inner core in the middle. Use a stapler to stick them together, and write information
about each layer on the inside of that layer. Get creative! Can you design a pop-out core?

5. How about baking an earth cake? Create several cakes, each with a different food coloring. Stack them in
layers after youve baked them, putting icing between the layers to help them stick together and on the top
to represent the crust. When you put the cake mixes into the pans to bake, try to use the approximate
dimensions that you calculated above so that the cake layers will be the correct thickness.

Why?
The earth formed from a big cloud of dust and gases. Gradually, the dust and gas came together, forming the
earth. In those early days over 4 billion years ago, the earth was mostly made up of liquid rock in volcanoes and
was pounded by collisions from other things in space. Over time, the earth began to cool, and more solid layers
formed, creating the earths crust.
Sometimes people talk about the earths spheres. The spheres of the earth are a way to describe some of the
different, large-scale types of matter on the earth. There's the at mosphere, which contains layers just like the
earth does. The earths hydrosphere contains the water on the earth. The lit hosphere is part of what youve
been exploring today: it contains the layers of rock closest to the surface of the earth, such as the earths crust.
The ast henosphere is in the upper mantle. Inside each sphere, matter changes from gas to liquid to solid form.

Digging Deeper
How could you adjust your models to show the changes in matter and the different states in each sphere?

You might also like