How to Learn Geology with Flashcards: 124 Cards from Minerals to Deep Time
Learn geology with 124 flashcards: mineral properties, rock cycle, plate tectonics, dating principles, faults, folds, intrusions and the geological time scale.
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Geology exams punish vague answers. "Cleavage" is not "when a rock breaks"; it is breakage along closely spaced parallel planes, as opposed to fracture. "Superposition" is not "old stuff is at the bottom"; it only holds in a tectonically undisturbed sequence. The Geology deck on Flip It (deck code QJ2180, 124 cards) is built around those precise definitions, from mineral identification to the geological time scale.
Study this deck: Geology
1 / 10Geology
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
A sample of the 124 cards
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| Streak in mineralogy | The color of the mark left by a mineral when scratched on a porcelain plate |
| Asthenosphere | The plastically deforming, solid upper mantle beneath the lithosphere, over which tectonic plates move |
| Subduction | One tectonic plate moves under another at a convergent boundary |
| Principle of superposition | In an undisturbed sequence, a sedimentary layer is younger than the one beneath and older than the one above |
| Xenoliths | Foreign rock bodies picked up by magma and incorporated into the rock; older than the rock that contains them |
| Laccolith | A dome-shaped igneous intrusion injected between rock layers, bulging the overlying strata upward |
| Anticline | A fold where the center buckles upward and the tops of rock units point upward |
| Seismic discontinuities | Boundaries within the mantle at 410 and 660 km depth that separate different layers |
| Acasta gneiss | Metamorphic rock from the Slave craton in northwestern Canada, among the oldest known rocks |
| Boudinage | Lenses of stretched rock formed during ductile deformation, named after the French word for sausage |
Everything the deck covers
- Minerals and rocks: mineral, streak, hardness, cleavage, luster, specific gravity, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock, the rock cycle, the four categories of sedimentary rock, metamorphism, foliation
- Plate tectonics and Earth structure: lithosphere, asthenosphere, crust, mantle convection, inner and outer core, S-waves, mid-ocean ridges, convergent and transform boundaries, subduction, continental drift, Pangaea, San Andreas Fault
- Relative and absolute dating: uniformitarianism, superposition, original horizontality, cross-cutting relationships, inclusions, intrusive relationships, faunal succession, radiometric dating, zircon, radiocarbon, uranium-thorium, dendrochronology
- Structures and intrusions: normal, thrust and strike-slip faults, folding, anticline, syncline, shear zone, boudinage, batholith, sill, dike, laccolith, xenoliths, magma chamber
- Methods and subfields: thin sections, optical mineralogy, birefringence, electron microprobe, fluid inclusions, stereonet, well logs, drill cores, ground-penetrating radar, aeromagnetic surveys, electrical resistivity tomography, petrology, geochemistry, stratigraphy, biostratigraphy, geochronology, thermochronology, glaciology, volcanology, planetary geology
- Deep time: Hadean eon, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, Holocene, Late Heavy Bombardment, Columbia, Rodinia and Pannotia supercontinents, Cambrian explosion, Permian-Triassic and Cretaceous-Paleogene extinctions
Two tips that make these cards stick
Learn the dating principles as a detective kit, not a list. Superposition, cross-cutting, inclusions and faunal succession each answer one question: "which is older?" When a card comes up, say out loud what evidence the principle uses (a fault cutting a layer, a xenolith trapped in lava, a fossil assemblage). The deck's inclusions and xenoliths cards are the same logic seen twice, so review them back to back.
Group the intrusion cards by shape. Sill (parallel to layers), dike (cuts across layers), laccolith (dome that bulges the strata), batholith (huge, deep). Sketch the four on one sheet once, then let the flashcards test recall of the sketch. The same trick works for the three fault types: draw the hanging wall moving down (normal), up (thrust), or sideways (strike-slip).
How to run the deck
Start with the mineral property cards and the rock trio, then plate tectonics, and leave the deep-time cards (eons, eras, supercontinents) for last: they are easier once the mechanisms behind them are familiar. At 124 cards, two sessions of 30 to 40 new cards a day followed by spaced reviews cover the whole deck in about a week.
Open Flip It at https://www.flip-it.app/, search the library for Geology (deck code QJ2180), and start with the first 20 cards.
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