EARTH’S INTERNAL HEAT
It’s this heat that keeps
EXOGENIC PROCESSES
• occur on the surface of the Earth
• Weathering
• Erosion
• Mass wasting
ENDOGENIC PROCESSES
• occur beneath the Earth surface
• Earth’s Internal Heat
• Magma Generation
• Folding and Faulting of Rocks
Layers of The Earth
Two categories of THE INTERNAL HEAT
SOURCES OF THE EARTH:
1. Primordial Heat
- Heat generated during Earth formation. Heat from
accretion and bombardment of the Earth during the
early stages of formation.
- Earth was hot when it formed.
- A lot of Earth’s heat is leftover from when our planet
formed, four-and-a-half-billion years ago. Earth is
thought to have arisen from a cloud of gas and dust
in space.
- solid particles, called “planetesimals” condensed out
of a cloud. They’re thought to have stuck together and
created the early Earth. Bombarding planetesimals
heated Earth to a molten state so Earth started out
with a lot of heat
• Accretion Energy
- heat released from collision of planetary objects
during the early formation of planets
• Adiabatic Compression
- heat released as the material is compressed.
2. Radioactive Heat
- the heat generated by long-term radioactive decay.
- its main sources are the four long-lived isotopes
(large half-life), namely K-40, Th-232, U-235 and
U-238 that made a continuing heat source over
geologic time.
- It involves the disintegration of natural radioactive
elements inside Earth – like uranium, for example.
Uranium is a special kind of element because when it
decays, heat is produced.
Earth from cooling off completely.
- Earth makes some of its own heat. Earth is cooling
now – but very, very slowly. Earth is close to a steady
temperature state. Over the past several billion years,
it might have cooled a couple of hundred degrees.
Earth keeps a nearly steady temperature, because it
makes heat in its interior.
- The process by which Earth makes heat is called
radioactive decay.
The estimated internal temperature of the Earth:
The mantle and asthenosphere are considerably
hotter than the lithosphere, and the core is much
hotter than the mantle.
a. Core-mantle boundary: 3,700°C
b. Inner-core - outercore boundary: 5000°C ±500°C
c. Earth’s center: 6,400°C ±600°C
How the Earth’s Internal heat redistributed?
• Simultaneous conduction, convection and radiation.
• CONVECTION
– process by which material circulates through a
region that is unevenly heated.
HEAT TRANSFER
- the movement of thermal energy from a warmer
place to a cooler place.
Three mechanisms of heat transfer are:
• Conduction
• Convection
• Radiation
1. Conduction
• The transfer of energy as heat from one substance
to another
• The molecules in a substance move faster as they
become heated. These fast-moving molecules cause
other molecules to move faster. Collisions between the
particles result in the transfer of energy, which warms
the substance.
2. Convection
• the process by which air, or other matter, rises or sinks
because of differences in temperature.
• occurs when gases or liquids are heated unevenly.
3. Radiation
• Radiative heat transfer is the only way to transfer heat
from one place to another that does not require a
medium. The energy emitted from a surface as
particles or waves.