1. Tuesday, November 22nd Brain Pop Pencil/Eraser Continental Drift Notes
DAILY AGENDA
REQUIRED MATERIALS
Brain Pop
Continental Drift Notes
Pencil/Eraser
Science Binder

2. ARIZONA STATE SCIENCE STANDARDS: GRADE LEVEL 7
Continental Drift
ARIZONA STATE SCIENCE STANDARDS: GRADE LEVEL 7
Strand 6: Earth and Space Science
Concept 2: Earth’s Processes and Systems
Understand the processes acting on the Earth and their interaction with the Earth systems.
PO 3. Analyze the evidence that lithospheric plate movements occur.
PO 4. Explain lithospheric plate movement as a result of convection.

3. Continental Drift DAILY OBJECTIVE:
Students will be able to understand how Earth changed over a long period of time

4. Continental Drift Lab

5. Continental Drift
The idea that the continents move very slowly across Earth’s surface; the hypothesis was proposed by Alfred Wegener.
250 million years ago, Earth’s continents were once joined in a single landmass
The continents gradually drifted apart to where they are today

6. Alfred Wegener
In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the hypothesis of continental drift to explain why the edges of the continents looked as though they could fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

7. Pangaea
Wegener thought that millions of years ago, all of the continents had formed one large landmass called Pangaea.
Pangaea broke apart to become the continents we have today.

8. Fossil Evidence
To support his continental drift hypothesis, Wegener collected fossils from the time of Pangaea
He found the same plant and animal fossils on the coastlines of different continents

9. Climate Evidence
Some rocks located in warm climates today were deposited by glaciers about 300 million years ago
South Africa has evidence that it was once covered by ice.

10. Geologic Evidence
Rock types and mountain ranges match up across the continents when they are arranged to form Pangaea.
Continents look like they could be part of a giant jigsaw puzzle

11. Hypothesis Rejected
Despite the evidence, scientists did not accept Wegener’s explanation of the forces that could cause continental drift
They couldn’t think of a force that was strong enough to move continents.
They were WRONG!!!