MS-ESS3-1NGSS*ScienceEarth and Space ScienceGrades 6-8
MS-ESS3-1: Explaining Where Earth's Mineral, Energy and Groundwater Resources Are Found
In plain English: MS-ESS3-1 is the NGSS middle school performance expectation that asks students to explain, with evidence, why mineral, energy and groundwater resources are found in some places and not others. Students link oil, metal ores, groundwater and soil to the geologic processes that formed them, and to how human removal is changing them. It is usually taught in grade 6, 7 or 8 Earth science.
Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how the uneven distributions of Earth's mineral, energy, and groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.
Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on how these resources are limited and typically non-renewable, and how their distributions are significantly changing as a result of removal by humans. Examples of uneven distributions of resources as a result of past processes include but are not limited to petroleum (locations of the burial of organic marine sediments and subsequent geologic traps), metal ores (locations of past volcanic and hydrothermal activity associated with subduction zones), and soil (locations of active weathering and/or deposition of rock).
Next Generation Science Standards · Disciplinary Core Idea: Earth and Human Activity · Official standard
Students construct scientific explanations for a question that sounds simple: why are oil, copper, good soil and well water found in some places and not in others? A natural resource is something from nature that people use. Each resource on this page formed through a geoscience process, a process of the Earth such as burial of sediment, volcanic activity, weathering or the flow of groundwater, and each process happens only in certain places. Students write every explanation as a claim, the evidence that supports it, and reasoning that links the two with Earth science ideas. They model an oil trap in a cup, measure how much water gravel, sand and clay soil can hold and pass, analyze invented drilling and well data, and sort cards about real places.
The NGSS Clarification Statement says: "Emphasis is on how these resources are limited and typically non-renewable, and how their distributions are significantly changing as a result of removal by humans. Examples of uneven distributions of resources as a result of past processes include but are not limited to petroleum (locations of the burial of organic marine sediments and subsequent geologic traps), metal ores (locations of past volcanic and hydrothermal activity associated with subduction zones), and soil (locations of active weathering and/or deposition of rock)." MS-ESS3-1 has no official Assessment Boundary. All numbers on this page come from invented data sets, labeled as invented; the real places are described without statistics. Students do the practice of constructing explanations: each phase ends with a written claim, evidence and reasoning.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
Explain how petroleum forms from buried remains of sea organisms and why it collects only in geologic traps under a cap rock
Explain why metal ores are concentrated where past volcanic and hydrothermal activity took place, such as above subduction zones
Explain why groundwater and deep soils are found where porous layers, weathering or deposition occur, using porosity data as evidence
Use data on well water levels and ore removal to explain why these resources are limited and how human removal changes where they are found
Write a claim, evidence and reasoning explanation for the location of a resource
Prior Knowledge Required
Students should already be comfortable with:
Energy and fuels come from natural resources, and using them affects the environment 4-ESS3-1
Reading patterns of Earth's features on maps 4-ESS2-2
Rocks form and change through weathering, erosion, deposition, melting and burial
Write three needs on the board: a new water well for the school, a copper mine, and an oil well. Ask students to think about their own town before any examples appear.
Warm-Up Prompt
"Your town council wants a water well, a copper mine and an oil well, all inside the town limits. Why can't the council just choose any three spots? For each one, write what the ground under the spot would need to have."
Collect ideas in three columns. Students often say "dig deep enough and you will find it"; keep that idea on the board, because the lesson tests it.
Direct Instruction15 minutes
Key words. A mineral is a natural solid with a definite chemical makeup, such as quartz or a copper mineral. An ore is rock with enough of a useful mineral or metal to be worth mining. A fossil fuel (coal, oil or natural gas) formed from the remains of living things buried long ago. Petroleum is another word for oil. Groundwater is water that fills the spaces between grains and the cracks in rock underground. A rock layer is porous when it has open spaces (pores), and permeable when those spaces connect so water can flow. An aquifer is a porous, permeable layer that holds groundwater a well can pump. Recharge is water from rain and snowmelt that soaks down and refills an aquifer. A resource is nonrenewable when it forms far more slowly than people use it.
Why the distribution is uneven. Each resource needs a particular process, and each process happens only in some places. Oil and gas form from tiny sea organisms (plankton) buried in sea-floor mud and slowly heated by more burial. They are less dense than water, so they rise through porous rock and escape at the surface, unless a cap rock with no connected pores, such as shale or salt, stops them. A place where oil and gas collect under a cap rock is a trap. Where oil reaches the surface instead, it forms a seep, such as the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Coal formed from swamp plants buried before they rotted. Metal ores form where hot water from magma (melted rock underground) carries dissolved metals into cracks and leaves them as minerals when it cools. This happens above subduction zones, places where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another and magma rises, and at hot springs on the sea floor. Moving water also sorts sediment by grain size and density, so gravel, sand and silt settle out in different places. Use Diagram 1 for the oil trap.
Energy resource: why one well finds oil and another does not (Diagram 1)
Invented drilling data. A sandstone layer bends up into a dome-shaped fold under shale. Well A, at the top of the fold, passes through the shale and reaches gas at 1,150 m and oil at 1,180 m. Well B, 3 km away on the side of the fold, reaches the same sandstone at 1,420 m and finds only salt water.
Result: Claim: the oil collected at the top of the fold. Evidence: the same sandstone is 1,420 - 1,150 = 270 m deeper at Well B and holds only water. Reasoning: gas and oil are less dense than water, so they rose up the sandstone until the shale cap rock stopped them at the highest point.
Mineral resource: copper ore above a subduction zone
Many of the world's largest copper mines are in the Andes Mountains of Chile and Peru, above the subduction zone where the Nazca Plate sinks beneath South America. Invented assay data: the ore at one mine is 0.6% copper by mass. How much rock must be mined to get 30 kg of copper?
Result: 0.6% of the rock is copper, so rock needed = 30 kg / 0.006 = 5,000 kg (5 t). Reasoning: hot fluids from the magma below old volcanoes carried copper into cracks, so the ore is concentrated there and almost absent in rock far from that activity.
Groundwater resource: how much water a sand layer holds
Invented lab and field data. 400 mL of dry sand from a river valley takes 140 mL of water before the water reaches the top. Under the valley, a sand layer is 3 km long, 2 km wide and 10 m thick.
Result: Porosity = 140 / 400 = 35%. Layer volume = 3,000 m x 2,000 m x 10 m = 60,000,000 m³, so it can hold about 0.35 x 60,000,000 = 21,000,000 m³ of water. The granite hills beside the valley have almost no pore space, so wells there find little water.
Human removal changes the resource (Diagram 2)
Invented data from a monitoring well in a farming valley. The water level below the ground was 30, 34, 38, 42 and 46 m in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. A farm pump draws water from 54 m below the ground.
Result: The level fell 46 - 30 = 16 m in 20 years, or 0.8 m per year. At that rate it reaches 54 m in (54 - 46) / 0.8 = 10 more years, about 2030. Pumping is removing water faster than recharge refills the aquifer.
Soil: active weathering makes thicker soil
Invented field data. The same kind of volcanic rock (basalt) is exposed in two places for about the same length of time. On a warm, rainy hillside the soil above it is 3.0 m thick. On a cold, dry plateau it is 0.4 m thick.
Result: 3.0 / 0.4 = 7.5, so the warm, rainy soil is 7.5 times as thick. Reasoning: water and warmth speed up weathering, the breaking down of rock, so soil builds up faster where weathering is active. Soil also builds up where rivers deposit silt in floods.
After each example, ask: "Which process put the resource here, and what evidence shows it?" Point out that every explanation names a process, not just a place. Then return to the warm-up idea "dig deep enough and you will find it": in Example 1, Well B went deeper than Well A and found no oil.
Guided Practice15 minutes
Pairs read the invented test-drilling results from the Larkin Basin (an invented region). For each site, they decide whether a resource was found and write a one-sentence claim that names the process.
Test drilling in the Larkin Basin (invented data)
Site
What the drill passed through
What came up
1
600 m of shale, then sandstone at the top of an upward fold
Natural gas, then oil
2
Shale, then the same sandstone low on the side of the fold
Salt water only
3
Granite cut by quartz veins, near the roots of an old volcano
Rock that is 0.9% copper
4
40 m of shale with no sand layers
Almost no water (a dry well)
5
25 m of sand and gravel beside a river
400 L of water per minute
Sites 1 and 2: why did the same sandstone give oil at one site and only water at the other? Name the role of the shale.
Site 3: how many kilograms of copper are in 1,000 kg of this rock? Which past process put the copper in the veins?
Sites 4 and 5: both are in layers of sediment. Use the words porous and permeable to explain the difference.
Write one claim, evidence and reasoning paragraph for the site your pair finds most surprising.
Independent Practice10-15 minutes
Each student explains the invented well data below from the town of Pell Creek, where three wells were drilled the same year.
Pell Creek town wells (invented data)
Well
Layer the well draws from
Depth (m)
Steady pumping rate (L/min)
North
Sand and gravel
30
350
East
Clay
30
4
South
Limestone with many open cracks
45
150
Students explain why the three rates differ so much, using the words porous, permeable and aquifer. Then they find how many liters the North well delivers in an 8-hour pumping day (350 x 60 x 8 = 168,000 L), and predict what will happen to its water level if the town pumps more each year than recharge adds.
Closure5 minutes
Exit ticket: "Pick one resource from today. Write three sentences: where it is found, which past or current process put it there, and how people removing it is changing it." Return to the warm-up columns and ask students to cross out any spot that lacks the process it needs.
Differentiation Strategies
For Struggling Students
Give a claim-evidence-reasoning frame: "The resource is found at ___ (claim). The data show ___ (evidence). This happens because ___ (process)."
Provide a word bank with a picture for each term: porous, permeable, aquifer, ore, cap rock, trap, recharge
Start with Diagram 1 and have students trace the path of rising oil with a finger before writing
For Advanced Students
Ask students to explain why a trap needs four things (source rock, burial, a porous layer and a cap rock) and predict what happens if any one is missing
Have students compare the 10-year forecast in Diagram 2 with a forecast that assumes pumping drops by half, and explain which data would show the change
Challenge: research one real resource in their state and write an explanation that names the process that formed it
Assessment Guidance
What to Look For
Look for explanations that name a process (burial of sea-floor mud, hydrothermal fluids, weathering, deposition, groundwater flow) and not just a place or a climate. Check that students separate porous from permeable: a clay layer can hold a lot of water and still be a poor aquifer. Listen for students who think groundwater sits in underground lakes, or that digging deeper always finds a resource. Strong answers use numbers from the data as evidence and mention that the resources form far more slowly than people remove them.
02
Classroom Activities
3 Activities
1
Oil Trap in a Cup
25 minGroups of 3
Groups build a model of rock layers in a clear cup and inject vegetable oil at the bottom. They see where the oil goes when part of the sand is covered by a dome of modeling clay (the cap rock) and part is not.
Procedure
Stand a drinking straw upright in a clear plastic cup so its end touches the bottom. Add about 4 cm of damp sand around it (the porous layer).
Press a small dome of modeling clay, shaped like an upside-down bowl about 5 cm wide, onto the sand on one side of the straw so the straw's end sits under the dome's edge. Leave the other half of the sand uncovered.
Slowly pour water down the side of the cup until it stands 3 cm above the sand.
Fill a 20 mL plastic syringe (no needle) with vegetable oil. Fit its tip into the top of the straw, seal the joint with a little modeling clay and push the plunger slowly. The oil cannot simply be dropped in: it would float on the water inside the straw, so the syringe pushes that water out and then sends the oil out of the bottom of the straw into the sand. Watch for 10 minutes, then collect the oil on the water surface with the dropper and measure it in a 10 mL graduated cylinder. Make a hole in the dome with a pencil and collect the oil trapped under it.
Safety: use only vegetable oil, water, sand and clay. Wipe spills right away because oil makes floors slippery, and wash hands after the activity.
Sample Data (invented)
20 mL of oil went in. Oil collected from the water surface: 4 mL. Oil trapped under the clay dome: 14 mL. The remaining 2 mL stayed in the straw and the sand. Students compute the percent trapped (14 / 20 = 70%).
Discussion Questions
Which part of the model stands for the cap rock, and which for the porous reservoir rock? What does the oil on the water surface stand for?
Why did the oil move up, not down? Which property of oil and water explains it?
In the real Earth, the oil forms in source rock over millions of years. What does the model leave out?
Modification for Distance Learning
Students build the model at home with a clear jar, sand and cooking oil under adult supervision, or watch a teacher demonstration on video and record the sample data in a table.
2
Which Layer Makes a Good Aquifer?
25 minGroups of 3-4
Groups measure two properties of three sediments: how much water each can hold (porosity) and how fast water passes through it (permeability). They use the results to explain why wells in some layers give much more water than others.
Procedure
Fill three plastic cups to the 200 mL line with dry aquarium gravel, dry sand and dry clay-rich garden soil.
Porosity: slowly pour water from a 100 mL graduated cylinder into each cup until the water just reaches the top of the sediment. Record the volume poured.
Permeability: refill the same three sediments into cups with small holes in the bottom, set each over a collecting cup, pour in 100 mL of water and time how long it takes to drain (stop at 10 minutes).
Porosity = water poured / 200 mL. Safety: wipe up spills and wash hands after handling soil.
Sample Data (invented)
Water poured to fill the pores: gravel 62 mL, sand 74 mL, clay soil 88 mL (porosity 31%, 37% and 44%). Time to drain 100 mL: gravel 7 s, sand 38 s, clay soil still dripping at 10 minutes, with only 12 mL through.
Discussion Questions
The clay soil held the most water but let the least water through. Is it a good aquifer? Explain with both measurements.
A town has a choice of drilling into a gravel layer or a clay layer of the same size. Which would give a well more water per minute, and why?
Where in a river valley would you expect to find thick sand and gravel layers, and which process put them there?
Challenge Variation
Groups mix gravel and sand in equal amounts, predict whether the mix has a higher or lower porosity than either one alone, then test it and explain the result (small grains fill the spaces between large ones).
3
Resource Map Detectives: Real Places
20 minPairs
Pairs receive 8 cards. Each card describes what is found at a real place. Pairs mark the place on a world or U.S. outline map, sort the cards by resource type (mineral, energy, groundwater, soil) and write the process that explains each one.
Card Set (8 cards)
Card 1: Thick coal layers lie between sandstone and shale in the Appalachian region (Pennsylvania and West Virginia), with fossil ferns and tree bark in them.
Card 2: North Sea oil fields, between Britain and Norway, lie in sandstone beneath thick shale, more than 2 km below the sea floor.
Card 3: In 1901, a well at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, struck a huge gusher of oil above a buried column of rock salt.
Card 4: Iron ore in Minnesota's Mesabi Range lies in thin layers of iron minerals that settled out of an ancient sea nearly 2 billion years ago.
Card 5: Much of Florida's drinking water comes from wells in limestone full of holes and channels dissolved by water.
Card 6: Long Island, New York, gets its drinking water from wells in layers of sand and gravel; the top layers were left by melting ice-age glaciers.
Card 7: Thick, fertile soils of Iowa formed in fine silt that the wind blew in and dropped near the end of the last ice age.
Card 8: Hawaii's young volcanic islands have thin, rocky soil on the newest lava flows and deep red soil on old, rainy slopes.
Teacher Key
Energy: Card 1 (swamp plants buried before they rotted), Cards 2 and 3 (buried marine mud, oil rose until shale or salt stopped it). Mineral: Card 4 (iron settled out of seawater). Groundwater: Cards 5 and 6 (porous, permeable limestone and glacial sand and gravel). Soil: Cards 7 and 8 (wind deposition of silt; weathering of lava over time in a wet climate).
Discussion Questions
Which cards describe resources that formed long ago and are not forming there now? Which processes are still going on?
Cards 2 and 3 are both oil. What do the shale and the salt have in common?
Choose one card and explain why the same resource is not found in a place nearby.
Modification for Distance Learning
Post the cards on a shared slide with a world map. Pairs drag each card to its place and type the process in a text box.
03
Diagrams & Visual Aids
2 diagrams
Diagram 1: An Oil and Gas Trap in an Upward Fold (Model)
A cross-section model, not to scale, of the invented wells in Example 1. Oil and gas form in the source rock, rise because they are less dense than water, and move up the porous sandstone until the shale cap rock stops them at the top of the fold. Well A reaches gas and oil; Well B reaches the same sandstone where it holds only salt water.
Diagram 2: Water Level in a Monitoring Well (Invented Data)
The invented monitoring-well data from Example 4, drawn to scale, with depth below the ground increasing downward. The level falls 0.8 m per year. If the trend continues (dashed), the water drops to the 54 m pump intake around 2030.
04
Homework Assignment
~30 min
MS-ESS3-1 Homework: Explaining Where Resources Are Found
Directions: All data sets are invented for practice. Show each calculation with units. End every problem with a claim, the evidence from the data, and reasoning that names the Earth process.
Part 1: Energy and Mineral Resources (Problems 1-3)
Three invented test wells are drilled into one sandstone layer that bends up into a dome under shale. Well P, at the top of the dome, finds natural gas. Well Q, partway down the dome, finds oil. Well R, far from the dome, finds salt water. (a) Explain this pattern. (b) Near Well Q, each cubic meter of the sandstone has 0.18 m³ of pore space, and 80% of that space is filled with oil. How many liters of oil are in 1 m³ of rock? (1 m³ = 1,000 L.)
Two invented copper mines each dig 500 t of ore. Ore at Mine A is 0.4% copper and ore at Mine B is 1.2% copper. (a) How many tonnes of copper does each get? (b) How many times as rich is Mine B's ore? (c) Both mines are near old volcanoes above a former subduction zone. Explain why copper ore is found there and not in most other rock.
In an invented model, a coal seam 3 m thick formed from a layer of swamp plant material (peat) about 30 m thick. Peat builds up about 1 mm per year. (a) About how many years of swamp growth does the seam represent? (b) A mine removes the whole seam in 15 years. How many times faster is the removal than the build-up? (c) Use your answers to explain why coal is called nonrenewable, and why coal is found only where ancient swamps were buried.
Part 2: Groundwater and Soil (Problems 4-6)
A student fills three cups with 250 mL of dry coarse sand, fine gravel and silty clay. Filling the pores takes 80 mL, 85 mL and 105 mL of water. Draining 100 mL of water takes 20 s, 9 s, and more than 10 minutes (only 15 mL through). (a) Find the porosity of each. (b) Which would make the best aquifer? Use both measurements in your explanation.
An invented monitoring well's water level was 15 m below the ground in 2010, 19 m in 2014 and 23 m in 2018. (a) How fast is the level falling, in meters per year? (b) A pump hangs 37 m below the ground. If the trend continues, in what year will the water level reach the pump? (c) Explain what is causing the change and name two ways the town could slow it.
An invented pit dug in a river floodplain shows 12 thin layers of silt in the top 60 cm of soil, each left by one flood. A nearby rocky ridge has 5 cm of soil. (a) What is the average thickness of one flood layer? (b) Explain why the floodplain soil is deep and the ridge soil is thin. (c) What other data would you collect to test your explanation?
Rubric
Criterion
Full Credit (2 pts)
Partial Credit (1 pt)
Calculations
Correct percents, rates and volumes with units
Correct method with one calculation or unit error
Evidence
Cites specific numbers or observations from the data
Refers to the data in general terms
Reasoning with Earth Processes
Names the process (burial, trapping, hydrothermal fluids, weathering, deposition, recharge) that links the evidence to the claim
States a claim with little or no process
Human Removal
Explains how removal changes the resource and why it is limited
Mentions removal without explaining its effect
05
Quiz: 20 Questions
Interactive, with answers
Instructions
All data sets are invented. Some questions ask you to calculate, others to explain where a resource is found and why. Your score updates as you answer, and Reset quiz clears everything so you or your students can try again.
Multiple choice: pick an option to check it. Short answer: write your answer, then reveal the model answer.
0 of 20 answered · 0 correct
Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which process explains why most petroleum is found in rock layers that formed in or near ancient seas?
Answer: B
Petroleum forms from the remains of tiny sea organisms buried in sea-floor mud and heated by more burial over millions of years. Choice A describes how igneous rock forms, not oil. Choice C has it backward: granite does not contain oil. Choice D confuses oil with ash and charcoal, which do not become petroleum.
Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In an oil trap, what does the cap rock do?
Answer: D
A cap rock such as shale or salt has no connected pores, so rising oil and gas collect beneath it. Choice B describes the reservoir rock (such as sandstone), not the cap rock. Choices A and C describe what happens in the source rock during burial.
Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice
A sandstone layer tilts upward until it meets a fault, a crack where the rocks have slid past each other. Across the fault, the sandstone now touches a layer of shale. Oil is found in the sandstone right next to the fault. Why?
Answer: A
Oil rises up the tilted, porous sandstone because it is less dense than water. Where the fault puts shale against it, the oil has nowhere to go and collects: this is a fault trap. Choice B is wrong because sand grains do not turn into oil. Choice D contradicts the idea that the sandstone is porous along its whole length.
Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Geologists explore an invented island chain with old, worn-down volcanoes that sat above a subduction zone millions of years ago. Where should they look for copper ore?
Answer: B
Copper ore forms where hot fluids from magma carry dissolved copper into cracks and leave copper minerals as they cool, so the cracked rock around the old magma bodies is the place to search. Choice A ignores the process: beach sand is far from the hot fluids. Choice C confuses ore formation with the burial of sea-floor mud that makes oil.
Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice
A copper ore is 0.5% copper by mass. How much copper is in 2,000 kg of this ore?
Answer: B
0.5% = 0.005, and 0.005 x 2,000 kg = 10 kg. Choice A treats 0.5% as one half (0.5 x 2,000). Choice C uses 5% instead of 0.5% (0.05 x 2,000). Choice D divides 2,000 by 0.5 instead of multiplying.
Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice
A student pours water into 300 mL of dry gravel until the water just reaches the top. It takes 90 mL. What is the porosity of the gravel?
Answer: A
Porosity is the pore space divided by the total volume: 90 / 300 = 0.30 = 30%. Choice B reads the 90 mL as a percent. Choice C is the solid part of the gravel (100% - 30%). Choice D divides by 390 mL, the gravel plus the water, instead of by the 300 mL of gravel.
Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In a lab, gravel has a porosity of 32% and drains 100 mL of water in 6 s. Clay soil has a porosity of 45% and lets only 10 mL through in 10 minutes. Why is a gravel layer the better aquifer even though clay holds more water?
Answer: D
An aquifer must be permeable: water has to flow through it to a well. Gravel's connected pores pass water quickly, while clay's tiny pores hold water but barely let it move. Choice A contradicts the 45% porosity in the data. Choice B contradicts the data too: the clay holds more. Choice C is wrong because water deep underground is not exposed to the air.
Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice
A monitoring well's water level was 12 m below the ground in 2004 and 21 m below the ground in 2016. On average, how fast did the water level fall?
Answer: C
The level fell 21 - 12 = 9 m in 2016 - 2004 = 12 years, and 9 / 12 = 0.75 m per year. Choice A forgets to divide by the number of years. Choice B divides the years by the meters (12 / 9). Choice D divides one depth by the other (21 / 12).
Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice
The High Plains aquifer lies under parts of eight states, from South Dakota to Texas. In some places its water level has dropped a great deal since large-scale pumping for farms began. What is the best explanation?
Answer: A
When pumping removes more water each year than recharge adds, the stored water shrinks and the water level falls. In drier parts of the High Plains, recharge is very slow. Choice B is wrong because sediment does not become granite, an igneous rock. Choice C is wrong because tides do not reach an aquifer far inland.
Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice
An invented field study measures soil depth: 10 cm on a steep hilltop, 35 cm on the lower slope, and 150 cm on the river floodplain. Which explanation fits these data?
Answer: B
Rain and gravity move weathered material down the slope, and floods deposit silt on the floodplain, so soil is thinnest at the top and deepest at the bottom. Choice A predicts the opposite of the data. Choice D is wrong because soil cannot sink into solid bedrock.
Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Why are coal and petroleum called nonrenewable resources?
Answer: C
A resource is nonrenewable when it forms far more slowly than people use it. Coal and oil take millions of years to form and are used up in decades. Choice A is false: many countries have coal or oil. Choice D is false because drills reach them every day.
Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Gold weathered out of quartz veins in California's Sierra Nevada. Prospectors in 1848 found much of it in stream gravels. Which process concentrated the gold there?
Answer: D
Gold is very dense, so flowing water drops it first and carries lighter grains away. Over time gold collects in stream gravels. Choice A has the density backward. Choice B is wrong because gravel cannot turn into a different element.
Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which evidence best supports the claim that the oil under a desert formed from an ancient sea?
Answer: A
Fossils of sea organisms in the oil-bearing layers show those rocks formed on a sea floor, which matches how petroleum forms. Choice B describes today's climate, not the past process. Choice C shows that oil is there, not how it formed. Choice D describes recent wind deposits at the surface.
Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice
At mid-ocean ridges, hot water rushes out of vents on the sea floor and builds chimneys of copper, zinc and iron minerals. What does this observation show about how metal ores form?
Answer: C
The vents show hydrothermal activity: hot water dissolves metals from rock and deposits metal minerals when it meets cold seawater. Choice A confuses ores with fossil fuels. Choice B is wrong because seawater at the vents does not freeze, and freezing does not make ore.
Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer
In a valley, oil oozes out of the ground where a sandstone layer reaches the surface. Five kilometers away, the same sandstone lies deep underground beneath a thick layer of shale, and a well there finds oil. Use both observations to explain why an oil field formed at the well but not in the valley.
In both places oil rose up the sandstone because it is less dense than water. At the well, the shale is a cap rock that stopped the rising oil, so it collected in a trap. In the valley no cap rock covered the layer where it reached the surface, so the oil kept moving up and escaped as a seep instead of collecting underground.
Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer
A layer of sand under a town is 2 km long, 1 km wide and 5 m thick, with a porosity of 30%. How many cubic meters of water can it hold when full?
Volume of the layer = 2,000 m x 1,000 m x 5 m = 10,000,000 m³. Water = 0.30 x 10,000,000 = 3,000,000 m³.
Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer
Country X has thick coal layers with fossil plants in them. Its neighbor, Country Y, has only granite and basalt at and below the surface. Explain why one has coal and the other does not.
Coal forms only from swamp plants buried before they rotted and pressed into rock over millions of years, in layers of sediment. The fossil plants in Country X are evidence of ancient swamps. Granite and basalt are igneous rocks made from cooled magma, so no plant material was buried in them and no coal formed.
Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer
A copper mine processes 40,000 t of ore per day. The ore is 0.8% copper. How much copper does the mine get per day? Why won't the ore grow back after it is mined?
0.008 x 40,000 t = 320 t of copper per day. The ore formed from hot fluids around magma over very long times, and that activity has ended there, so the ore is nonrenewable: mining removes it and leaves rock with almost no copper.
Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer
An invented aquifer gets 2 million m³ of recharge each year, and wells pump out 5 million m³ each year. How does the amount of stored water change in 10 years? What will happen to the water level in the wells?
Each year the aquifer loses 5 - 2 = 3 million m³, so in 10 years it loses 30 million m³. The water level falls, so wells must be drilled deeper or pumps lowered, and shallow wells may go dry.
Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer
In an invented river valley, the river spread over its fields in a flood each spring for thousands of years. Explain why the valley floor has such deep, fertile soil, and predict what will happen to the fields and to the coast at the river's mouth after a large dam upstream begins trapping most of the river's silt.
Each flood deposited a new layer of silt carrying nutrients from upstream, so the soil kept building up. With the silt trapped in the lake behind the dam, far less new silt reaches the fields, so farmers will need fertilizer, and the coast at the river's mouth will wear away because no new sediment replaces what waves remove.
0 of 20 answered · 0 correct
06
Frequently Asked Questions
10 Questions
What does MS-ESS3-1 mean?
MS-ESS3-1 asks students to explain, with evidence, why mineral, energy and groundwater resources are unevenly spread across Earth. The explanation links each resource to the geoscience process that formed it, such as the burial of sea-floor mud or past volcanic activity. The code means Middle School, Earth and Space Science, core idea 3 (Earth and Human Activity), performance expectation 1.
What grade is MS-ESS3-1 taught in?
It is a middle school standard, so it can be taught in grade 6, 7 or 8. Schools that teach Earth science as one year often place it in grade 6 or 8; integrated courses may split it across years. It fits well after students learn the rock cycle.
Does MS-ESS3-1 have an assessment boundary?
No. NGSS lists no Assessment Boundary for MS-ESS3-1. The Clarification Statement focuses on how the resources are limited and typically nonrenewable, how human removal is changing them, and on three examples: petroleum, metal ores and soil.
Why is oil found in some places and not others?
Oil needs several things in the same place. Sea-floor mud rich in tiny organisms must be buried and heated, the oil must move into a porous rock, and a cap rock such as shale or salt must trap it. Where any piece is missing, there is no oil field, or the oil escapes at the surface.
Is groundwater stored in underground lakes?
Mostly no. Groundwater usually fills the tiny spaces between grains of sand and gravel and the cracks in rock, like water in a sponge. Open caves full of water exist in some limestone, but they are the exception.
What is the difference between a mineral and an ore?
A mineral is any natural solid with a definite chemical makeup. An ore is rock that holds enough of a useful mineral or metal to be worth mining. A rock can contain a little copper and still not be an ore.
Is groundwater a renewable resource?
It can be, but only as fast as recharge refills it. Where pumping takes out more water each year than rain and snowmelt add, the water level falls and the aquifer behaves like a nonrenewable resource for people alive today.
What safe labs work for MS-ESS3-1?
Labs with sand, gravel, soil, modeling clay, water and vegetable oil work well: an oil trap in a cup, porosity and permeability tests, and card sorts with maps. None needs heat or chemicals. Remind students to wipe up oil spills and wash hands after handling soil.
How do students show mastery of MS-ESS3-1?
Students write a scientific explanation with a claim, evidence from data and reasoning that names a geoscience process. Strong answers use numbers from data, such as porosity or water-level change, and explain why a resource is found here but not nearby.
How does MS-ESS3-1 connect to high school?
It prepares students for HS-ESS3-1, which explains how resources and hazards have shaped where people live, and HS-ESS3-2, which weighs the costs and benefits of different ways to develop energy and mineral resources.
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Related Standards
5 standards
These standards connect to MS-ESS3-1: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.
Before this lesson
4-ESS3-1Prerequisite
Describe how energy and fuels come from natural resources and affect the environment
Lesson coming soon
Alongside
MS-ESS2-1Parallel
Model the cycling of Earth's materials and the energy that drives it
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