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Saturday, January 10, 2015

Earth's floor: Spheres

""Spheres, spheres, spheres, spheres, spheres! The universe is full of spheres! A marble is a sphere. A basketball is a sphere. A balloon is a sphere--well, almost. The Sun is a great, big, giant, super-colossal, boiling hot sphere!Image of a dinosaur with a basketball.

Even Earth is a huge sphere. In fact, you can think of Earth as a whole bunch of spheres, one inside the other, something like the colored layers inside a jawbreaker. From the inside out, Earth's spheres are:

The Lithosphere ("rock sphere") is the ground you are standing on and the whole inside of Earth.

The Hydrosphere ("water sphere") includes all of the rivers, lakes and oceans of Earth.
Animation showing the different spheres of the Earth.  Please have someone assist you with this.
The Cryosphere ("icy cold sphere") is the frozen part of Earth: the glaciers, icebergs at sea, and the huge icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica.

The Biosphere ("Life sphere") includes all living things: the trees in the park, the birds in the air, the fly on your wall, the viruses that make you sick, your pets, and even you and all your friends!

The Atmosphere ("Air Sphere") is the envelope of air that surrounds the whole Earth.

The Exo- or Celestial Sphere ("Outside or heavenly sphere") includes the whole universe beyond the top of the atmosphere--the Sun, Moon, and stars, as well as the asteroids and the little bits of dust that make meteors when they hit the atmosphere."
See more about each sphere @ cotf.edu