Question 1 of 10: Multiple Choice

Question 1: Multiple Choice (5 marks)

Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.

1) Mafic rock → (c) Basalt. Granite and rhyolite are felsic (quartz+feldspar rich, low Fe-Mg); andesite is intermediate; basalt is the standard fine-grained mafic (Fe-Mg-rich, silica-poor, dark) extrusive rock.

2) Southernmost North American glacial advance → (d) Southern edge of Illinois. Pre-Illinoian/Illinoian ice lobes of the Laurentide ice sheet pushed as far south as the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers near southern Illinois (roughly 37°N) – well south of the Wisconsinan limit and far south of the 49th parallel or southern Ontario.

3) Seismic arrival order → (a) P-wave→S-wave→L-wave. Body waves always outrun surface waves: P (primary, fastest, compressional) arrives first, S (secondary, slower, shear) second, and surface (Love/Rayleigh, "L") waves – which travel only along the boundary layer – arrive last despite carrying most of the damaging energy.

4) Delta type → (c) Wave-dominated. The photograph is the Nile delta: a dark, triangular (fan-shaped) delta plain whose seaward edge is a smooth, gently arcuate coastline with only two blunt cusps at the Rosetta and Damietta mouths. There are no finger-like distributary channels building out into the sea. Mediterranean waves rework the river sediment along the shore into beaches and barrier bars as fast as it arrives, which is the arcuate, wave-dominated end-member. A stream-dominated delta would show a bird's-foot shape (the Mississippi); a tide-dominated delta would show funnel-shaped, shore-normal tidal channels and bars (the Ganges–Brahmaputra).

5) Most widespread surface metamorphic rock → (a) Regional metamorphism. Regional metamorphism operates over the large orogenic belts at convergent plate margins, producing the vast exposed tracts of schist/gneiss/slate on continents; contact and hydrothermal metamorphism are localized to intrusion margins, and burial/impact metamorphism affect comparatively tiny areas.