Brainpop videos: Erosion and Rock Cycle

Brainpop: Rock cycle

The three rock types, metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous are all made of magma, lava, mineral grains, and crystals. Metamorphic rocks are made of heat and pressure onto baking rocks, or earth’s plates moving to create metamorphic rocks. Sedimentary rocks are forms above surface usually from erosion. Igneous rocks have two types, extrusive igneous rocks and intrusive igneous rocks. Both are made when magma/lava cools forming rocks, but the formation is different. Extrusive ones’ magma comes onto the earth’s surface (becoming lava) and cools to form rocks. Whereas intrusive rocks forms when magma cools and hardens underground after thousands of years. The rock cycle is like this, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks can be melted and cooled back to igneous rocks, igneous and metamorphic rocks then can be eroded to make sedimentary rocks, finally sedimentary and igneous rocks near heat and pressure can become metamorphic.


Brainpop: Erosion

Erosion is anything that can change the landscape, like when plant roots keep sand and soil together. The first part of erosion is when sand and rocks are picked up and thrown about by glaciers, wind, running water, or waves. Secondly, another part of erosion is weathering. Weathering is when small particles of dirt wear away from rocks. Lastly erosion is also caused by rivers, oceans, and rain, when it carries soil down the water. In these processes the pebbles hit each other constantly, gradually getting smaller. Finally erosion some issues (not necessarily bad) like floodplains, sandbars, and river deltas, or even change the shapes of the continents. But erosion forms some things as well such as beaches.