Mapping The Ocean
- To study the ocean floor is very hard, because the ocean is very dark, cold, and it's water pressure is very high. Since it is so difficult to study the ocean for these reasons, so the scientists need technology to help them. They use sonar, scuba, submersibles, satellites, remote underwater manipulators, and gravity mapping.
- Vocabulary Words:
1. Continental Shelf:A continent's edge is a gently sloping-shallow area.
2. Continental slope: It is at the edge shelf where the ocean floor drops off in a steep incline.
3. Abyssal plain: A smooth and nearly flat area of the ocean floor (and in some places it is a called a trench).
4. Mid-ocean ridge: A countinous range of mountains around earth.
5. Seamounts: Mountains on an abyssal plain that are underwater and some reach above the ocean surface.
6. Magama: a hot liquid that flows out of the mantle.
7. Lava: Magma on surface.
8. Sea-floor spreading: A process where newer eruptions push the old rock away from the ridge.