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In Partial Fulfillment of

The Requirements

In Integrated Science - 8

A Scientific Research

On

“The Ocean Floor: Formation and Changing Process”

Submitted by:

Sharmaine Acosta

Submitted to:

Engr. Maria Theresa Malbarosa- Maturan

January 11, 2015

 1
The Ocean floor is similar to the land areas of the world. It also features such

as mountains, plains, channels, canyons, exposed rocks, and sediment-covered areas.

However, the lack of weathering and erosion in most areas allows geological

processes to be seen more on the ocean floor than on land. The entire ocean floor

has now been mapped to a maximum resolution of around 5 km, which means we can

see most features larger than 5 km across in those maps. That’s the resolution of

a new global map of the seafloor published recently by David Sandwell of Scripps

Institute of Oceanography in San Diego and colleagues, who used some nifty tricks

with satellites to estimate the landscape of the sea floor and even reveal some features

of the Earth’s crust lurking beneath sea-floor sediments. Unlike mapping the land, we

can’t measure the landscape of the sea floor directly from satellites using radar,

because sea water blocks those radio waves. But satellites can use radar to measure

the height of the sea’s surface very accurately. And if there are enough measurements

to subtract the effects of waves and tides, satellites can actually measure bumps and

dips in the sea surface that result from the underlying landscape of the ocean floor.

2
We have to use sonar instead of satellites to map the ocean floor back home

in greater detail. Modern sonar systems aboard ships would be able to map the ocean

floor to a hundred meters resolution across a narrow strip below the ship. The more

comprehensive maps now cover about 10%-15% of the oceans, an area approximately

the size of Africa. Mapping from ships at the level of detail attainable by ship’s sonar

systems still reveals an abundance of revelations.

1
Jon Copley and The Conversation UK, Just How Little do we know about the ocean floor,
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/just-how-little-do-we-know-about-the-ocean-
floor/]
2
Paref Southcrest Compilation Book, Earth Science Grade Six Handouts, a/n
 3
In the first half of the twentieth century, scientists eventually had the tools to

discover about the ocean floor. Among the most vital tools was sonar. Scientists

established that the rocks of the ocean bottoms were very young in comparison to

rocks found in the continents. They also discovered that rocks were youngest

especially near the mid-ocean ridge.

4
Not long after, Harry Hess, an American geologist, proposed the sea-floor

spreading theory to elucidate these discoveries about the ocean floor. Sea-floor

spreading was the missing piece of information scientists considered necessary to

acknowledge the theory of continental drift. It supplied a way for portions of the crust

to move. With this new data, scientists had to develop a novel model structure of the

earth’s crust.

5
The new model came to be known as the plate tectonics theory. According to it,

the total lithosphere of the earth is separated into portions named as plates. The plates

are continuously moving, each at different rate and direction. Because the plates are

parts of the 6lithosphere they are called lithospheric plates.

3
Ibid. p.88
4
Ibid. p.89
5
Ibid. p.90