Weathering and why the interior is hot

• Weathering is the process that changes solid rock into sediments.
• Weathering involves physical, chemical, and biological processes acting separately or, more often, together to achieve the disintegration and decay of rock material.
• Mechanical Weathering, also known as physical weathering, causes rocks to crumble and breaks rock into smaller pieces without changing its composition.
• Ice Wedging, also called freeze-thaw weathering, is the main form of mechanical weathering in any climate that regularly cycles above and below the freezing point.
• Abrasion is a process where one rock bumps against another rock.
• Gravity causes abrasion as a rock tumbles down a mountainside or cliff.
• The theory of plate tectonics also explains how the Earth's lithosphere is composed of the crust and the mantle.
• The theory of plate tectonics provides a unified explanation for the changes in the Earth's surface, including volcanic activity, earthquakes, and mountain building.
• The lithosphere moves due to heat from the Earth's interior, causing changes in the Earth's surface.
• The movement of the Earth's lithosphere, as explained by the theory of plate tectonics, is driven by heat from the Earth's interior.
• The theory of plate tectonics explains how the Earth's lithosphere is divided into plates and how these plates move.
• Chemical Weathering involves the alteration of the rock’s chemical composition.
• Common agents of chemical weathering include water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and acids produced by lichens and other organisms.
• These agents can chemically react with rock to form new minerals that are stable at Earth’s surface conditions, leading to the weakening and disintegration of the rock.
• Biological Weathering involves living or once-living organisms contributing to weathering.
• Lichens and mosses that grow on rocks also contribute to weathering by retaining moisture and releasing acids.
• Once a rock has been broken down, a process called erosion transports the bits of rock and minerals away.
• The four forces of erosion are water, wind, glaciers, and gravity.
• Radioactive decay is a natural process; unstable elements like Uranium (238U) or Potassium (40K) stabilize with time and produce what we call daughter products: Lead (206P) for Uranium and Argon (40Ar) for Potassium.
• The Earth’s interior is hot due to two main reasons: heat from the planet’s formation and heat from the decay of radioactive elements.
• This process accumulated a lot of heat; when two objects collide, heat is generated.
• Mantle convection is the result of heat transfer from the core to the base of the lower mantle.
• The heat from the Earth’s formation represents about 10% of the total heat inside the Earth.
• Radioactivity represents about 90% of the total heat inside the Earth.
• In the Earth’s mantle, hot rock rises and slightly cooler rock sinks.
• The Earth was formed by the process of accretion, where meteorites gravitationally attracted each other and formed bigger objects, which attracted bigger masses, until our planets reached their current size.
• Buoyancy causes it to rise, and cooler material flows in from the sides.
• Convection is the process by which less dense material rises and more dense material sinks.
• The fact that the temperature gradient is much lower in the main part of the mantle than in the lithosphere has been interpreted as evidence of convection in the mantle.
• Denudation- wearing down of mountains
• Hydrolysis is the name of the chemical reaction between a chemical compound and water.
•  Sulfuric and nitric acids are the two main components of acid rain