After carefully reading this chapter, completing the exercises within it, and answering the questions at the end, you should be able to:

• Explain what geology is, how it incorporates the other sciences, and how it is different from the other sciences.
• Discuss why we study Earth and what type of work geologists do.
• Define some of the properties of a mineral and explain the differences between minerals and rocks.
• Describe the nature of Earth’s interior and some of the processes that take place deep beneath our feet.
• Explain how those processes are related to plate tectonics and describe a few of the features that are characteristic of plate boundaries.
• Use the notation for geological time, gain an appreciation for the vastness of geological time, and describe how very slow geological processes can have enormous impacts over time.