Teacher's Guide for:

Genesis

“Genesis” is a 35mm, two-story-tall film shown on the planetarium dome.   The is an excellent treatment of plate tectonics and continental drift, including some nice graphics of time-lapse continents in motion.  The film basically examines two ideas:The Earth is undergoing an ever-continuing creation process whereby some of the Earth’s crust is being destroyed while new crust is being created.   The Earth is not static. These processes are responsible for the large-scale changes we see on our Earth.

This show conforms to the following state science standards:  12.E.2b, 12.E.3a, 12.E.4a

The film details four basic processes:
1. “Sea Floor Spreading” – as occurs in the ocean trenches, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.   Thus new crust is created.
2. “Subduction” – occurs when a continental plate meets an ocean plate.  The ocean plate is driven (subducted) beneath the continental plate, the friction creating heat to fuel volcanoes.  Mt. St. Helens is an example of this.
3. “Mountain building”  - occurs when a continental plate meets a continental plate with collision being followed by thrusting upwards.
4. “Faulting” – when plates move and grind past each other.  We feel the waves given off in such movements as earthquakes.

In the film, we examine examples of the above processes with footage of the San Andreas Fault, the Alps range, Iceland, Santorini (ancient Thera) plus others.

Internet resources:

Latest earthquake news:  http://www.earthquake.com/headlines.html
Explorezone:  http://explorezone.com/news/earthquakes.htm and http://explorezone.com/news/volcanoes.htm
United States Geological Survey:  http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/
The story of plate tectonics:  http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/dynamic.html
Plate tectonics for kids:  http://library.thinkquest.org/27026/
Even more plate tectonics:  http://www.platetectonics.com/
Volcanoes of the World:  http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/world.html