So everything I find just mentions erosion taking place over a long period of time, but just what is happening? Does a microscopic layer get drug away all the time, or is it nothing until all of a sudden some gets carried away?
Asking because I didn’t know if erosion was taking place at an immeasurable pace with my drinking glass.
Edit: I should add that I understand from a high level how erosion, or weathering, occurs. But I don’t know how it’s happening at a micro level. Is it always the top layer of atoms being stripped? I’m assuming bond strength plays a factor, but does the weathering material break the bond down over time, or just if bond strength is < some measure then it strips away?
In: 1
>Does a microscopic layer get drug away all the time
This.
There are different forces that act on different aspects of the environment, but in general, it’s that a huge amount of very gentle force, over a very long time, causes enough “damage” that it becomes visible.
A drop of water is much weaker than stone. But if every 10 drops that fall from a stalactite slam into a stone carry away a tiny little microscopic chunk of the stone, then 10 billion drops over the course of 100 years are going to have removed enough tiny little chunks to start to make a crater shape.
This happens with wind carrying tiny grains of abrasive material like sand, scouring away at a rock face over millions of years, little by little. It happens with metals that rub together, like chain links. It happens when waves crash against rocks or cliff faces or even sandy beaches. It happens in your water glass as well.
So when we use the word erosion casually, we are referring to the action of terrain being broken down and moved about by natural processes. Geologists actually describe these two processes as different things called “erosion” and “weathering.” Weathering is the process of breaking small pieces off of the landscape, while erosion is the action that moves those small pieces around. Wind and water are both excellent at picking up small particles and depositing them elsewhere. Weathering can take different forms: physical, chemical, and biological. Physical weathering comes from movement, so something like the waves on the ocean smoothing rocks with the sand is physical weather. Chemical weathering comes from chemical interactions (obviously) like acid rain, or a mineral that can dissolve in water. The final one, biological, is things like insects digging out soil, or organism that excrete or break down minerals in their environment.
Your glass of water is likely not doing much of anything, as the glass has no reaction to water. But scoop up some ocean water in a glass and swirl it around, and you may cloud the glass with the sand scraping its surface. That would be weathering. The sea-glass you might find in the ocean has been sand blasted for years to wear down its sharp edges, and would probably take centuries to be worn away entirely.
It’s usually a slow thing like a river slowly dragging the lightest sand pieces down stream… wind can also do it, but it’s basically nature moving sand/dirt piles.. the rivers are fairly slow, until there’s a big rainstorm or flood, that’s moving more water, thus more dirt/materials, it’s gonna end up somewhere else…
You could probably YouTube videos that go into varying levels of depth, but yea, if there’s a constant flow of something, then tiny layers are constantly being dug away, that can happen until there’s a landslide, which is erosion at a much faster pace (or avalanches, or big volcano eruptions, or hurricanes)
Latest Answers