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Geology & Earth Sciences vocabulary · Earth's Structure

Core

Meaning in geology & earth sciences, with examples

/kɔːr/nounCore term

In geology & earth sciences, core means: The central part of the Earth, made mainly of iron and nickel. The outer core is liquid and creates the magnetic field; the inner core is solid.

In Turkish: çekirdek, yer çekirdeği

How it is used

Usually used with outer and inner: the outer core, the inner core, the core-mantle boundary. Most of what we know comes from seismic waves; for example, S waves cannot pass through the liquid outer core.

Example sentences

  1. Movements in the liquid outer core generate the Earth's magnetic field.

  2. Seismologists first detected the inner core in the 1930s.

Common collocations

  • outer core
  • inner core
  • core-mantle boundary
  • the Earth's core
  • mantleThe thick layer of hot, mostly solid rock between the crust and the core, reaching a depth of about 2,900 km. It flows very slowly over millions of years.
  • crustThe thin, rocky outer layer of the Earth. It is about 5 to 10 km thick under the oceans and usually 30 to 50 km thick under the continents.
  • seismic waveA wave of energy that travels through the Earth or along its surface, produced by an earthquake, an explosion or another sudden ground movement.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Earth's Structure

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