Questions for Sedimentary Rock Notes

Paste these questions into your journal then provide detailed answers.

1. Imagine you are a paleontologist; a person who studies extinct plants and animals. Would you rather go looking for fossils in an area where the bed rock was mostly basalt or mostly sandstone? Explain your choice.
2. Describe the two types of sedimentary rock.
3. Clastic rocks are made of rock and mineral fragments. List the three categories of those fragments in order from the largest to the smallest fragment sizes.
4. What is a chemical precipitate?
5. Of the two types of sedimentary rocks, which is the most useful for human society? Why do you think this?
6. List the steps for forming a sedimentary rock.
7. Describe an effect of industrialized human society that has increased chemical weathering.
8. Fourteen thousand years ago what agent of erosion was hard at work in Western Washington state?
9. Describe the agents of erosion that are now at work here.
10. Sediments from floods are often not well sorted. Explain why that is.
11. How is lithification different from freezing?
12. How is lava solidifying different from freezing? (or is it?)
13. List the two processes of lithification. Of these which is the most important?
14. Why are sedimentary rocks overly represented on the continents? Hint: what is the hydrological system and what about mineral density?