Classroom visuals
Film info
Film summary
The land surface of the Earth accounts for 1% of its total volume. Travel from the core to Earth's surface, examining the layers that make up our planet.Key facts
- The Earth is made up of four layers.
- The Earth's solid inner core is surrounded by a liquid outer core.
- Above the outer core is the mantle, made up of solid and molten rock 3000 km deep.
- The Earth's crust is broken into seven moving pieces called tectonic plates.
Transcript
The surface of the Earth we live on is cool rock, but deep below this, our planet is red hot.
There are four layers to the Earth.
A solid inner core, is surrounded by a liquid outer core.
Solid inner core
Liquid outer core
Outside this is the mantle, the largest section of Earth, stretching 3000km in depth.
Mantle
Finally, a thin crust – the surface we live on.
Crust
The inner core is at the centre of the Earth – a solid ball of iron and nickel, reaching 5500 degrees centigrade.
Inner core:
Solid iron and nickel
5500°C
With its immense heat energy, the inner core is the engine room of our planet.
The outer core is also hot nickel and iron, but because there's less pressure here, it's liquid rather than solid.
Outer core:
Liquid iron and nickel
Mantle
The huge mantle is mostly solid, but can also melt when heated by the core.
This molten rock is called magma.
The crust we live on is the thinnest section of Earth.
The crust is just 5-70km deep, making up only 1% of Earth's volume.
It isn't one continuous layer, but is broken up into seven huge pieces, called plates.
Pacific plate
African plate
Antarctic plate
Eurasian plate
North-American plate
Indo-Australian plate
South-American plate
These float on the semi-molten magma, and are so vast they carry entire continents, and extend far under the oceans.
You can physically see the plate boundaries.
This gap, situated in Iceland, separates the Eurasian plate from the North American plate.
The plate runs unbroken for 7000km, all the way to California.
The thin crust we walk around on may seem vast, but deep beneath our feet there's around a trillion cubic kilometres of metal and rock under immense heat and pressure...
Shaping our landscapes, and influencing our climate.
