🌋 Splitting Iceland? | NYSSLS Cluster 9 Practice | Earth’s Interior, Convection & Seismic Waves

🌍 Welcome to Cluster 9 of my NYSSLS Earth & Space Science Regents practice series!

In this video, we break down the “Splitting Iceland?” sample cluster from the official NYSED resources. I walk you through each question step-by-step and help you understand key concepts like:

✅ Earth’s interior structure
✅ Primary vs. Secondary seismic waves
✅ Mantle convection and density
✅ The role of radioactive decay in energy flow
✅ Hotspots, plate boundaries, and volcanic rock formation

Perfect for students preparing for the new NYSSLS-aligned Regents exam, this cluster targets key skills needed to hit PLD Level 5 performance.

📘 TOPICS COVERED
– Seismic wave behavior
– Thermal energy cycling through Earth
– Radioactive decay and energy transfer
– Mid-ocean ridges and Iceland’s geology
– Plate tectonics and rock types

💡 I’ll explain how to break down diagrams, eliminate bad answer choices, and apply your knowledge of the atmosphere like a pro. Plus, I rate the difficulty of each question based on what might trip up Regents students.

📥 These questions are unofficial, anonymously submitted — but they’re packed with Regents-style structure and thinking!

🧑‍🎓 STUDENTS: A great review of real-world weather applications.
👩‍🏫 TEACHERS: Use this as a warm-up, homework assignment, or sub plan.

📥 Download the 2024 ESSRT (Official NYSED PDF):
👉 https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/state-assessment/earth_space_science_ref_tables_2024.pdf

📥 Practice with the official NYSED Cluster Questions:
👉 https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/state-assessment/ess-sample-clusters.pdf

🎥 Watch the full NYSSLS Regents playlist:
👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZvenjz1Ko5Ee2TFmdMwpK3QsvzoH03XW

💬 Drop any questions below — I’ll answer them!
👍 Like + Subscribe if this helped!

[Music] hey everyone welcome back to I teach you science today we are doing another cluster set this is called splitting Iceland there’s six questions if you can please share this video with your friends and your teacher and we’re going to study for this earth earth and space science regions together over here so it says base your answers to questions 1 through six on the information below and your knowledge of earth and space science so it says Iceland is a small island located in North Atlantic Ocean it’s known for its unique geology the landscape is characterized by by volcanoes by glaciers and geothermal activity that just means like activity in the mantle that produces heat it’s normally like referring to like lava eruptions things like that due to its position on the Mid-Atlantic ridge so it’s on a plate boundary the Mid-Atlantic ridge is an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean iceland is the only area above sea level on the mid-Atlantic ridge and therefore a popular spot for geologists to study the movement of the plates so you could see picture with some volcanoes it shows the plates and if you look on the reference table and you go to the plate boundaries chart here we are talking about the area here so you could see this is the North American plate separating from the Eurasian plate pretty two two really big plates all right let’s see what it says iceland’s volcanic activity is due in part to the movement of the plates but is also intensified by a mantle plume directly under the island that’s like a hot spot a mantle plume is located upwelling of hot rock material from deep within the Earth’s mantle the plume provides an additional source of heat and magma fueling frequent eruptions and creating diverse volcanic landforms okay so there’s your plume coming up right under Iceland it’s a lot of reading here geologists can find information about Earth’s interior directly underneath Iceland by studying seismic waves these waves of energy created by an earthquake there are two types primary waves and secondary waves P waves S waves when earthquake occurs both of these waves start at the same time at the focus and then they can be felt on the surface however they’re different table one compares the characteristics of them and image three shows how the waves move through the interior so I just want to go to to this one and just look okay so this is speed right so it’s getting speeding up as they go through for the whatever waves A and you could see A does not move through the outer core so the outer core is a liquid so if the A line is absent we know A is the S-wave which means B is the Pwave so if I’m assuming they’re going to ask about that P waves can move through both solids and liquids is the first wave to be felt speed about eight s waves can only move through solids the second wave and the speed is slower okay so what do we got to do for each red line place an X in the appropriate box to indicate whether it’s a Pwave or an S-wave okay so we could just do what we said so A is the S-wave no waves through the liquid outer core and then this is the Pwave because Pwaves can travel through solids or liquids so it did go through the outer core that was easy uh that question super super easy i would say that’s like a two out of 10 difficulty thermal convection in the mantle under Iceland is the process by which matter moves due to temperature and density differences so again heat rises always right so heat goes up heat goes up because it’s less dense that’s why it rises okay so red is hot and then blue is colder use image 4 to determine the correct descriptions of what is happening to matter as a result of the flow of energies at one and two in the model so this is a giant convection current it’s It’s not great in the picture but we’re rising here and we’re kind of sinking back down here so I think this is what they’re going for here let’s see oh read the descriptions place the two numbers of the correct descriptions for one and two on the lines provided okay so we need the one where it’s heating it becomes less dense and rises so let’s look at the heating material heats becomes less densized three so this is going to go at one that’s the one where it heats becomes less dense and rises right there and then at two we want it to be cools becomes more dense and sinks cools more dense sinks four i mean yeah three and four that was so easy two out of 10 easy easy describe the flow of energy cycling matter through Earth’s interior select three correct answers okay let’s see matter always just stays beneath the surface wait matter always stays just beneath the surface of the Earth no there’s matter everywhere matter can be pushed by the flow of energy down into the mantle and then rise again in other areas i guess so that’s might be right matter can be pushed by the flow of energy down into the mantle all the way to the top of the core um is this supposed to be based off of Well let’s just check the reference table real quick so it’s saying it could be cycled all the way down to the outer core i would say that’s possibly right so we’ll say this is a maybe right we’ll see how wrong the other ones are the energy to move matter and create a hot spot comes from the volcano no it comes from the core the energy to move matter and create a hot spot comes from the core yes the energy to move matter and create a hot spot comes from the subduction of the crust no so did I get three so we got two is good matter can be pushed down into mantle all the way to the top of the to the top of the core which core the outer core or the inner core i I don’t know this question’s weird five is definitely good i mean I guess it’s three i I don’t like this question this three is this is not This is kind of uh Which core you know what I mean cuz if it was the inner core I don’t know if that would be right anymore so we’ll go with 235 and we’ll say this question is a five out of 10 and odd wording you know we hope that on the actual test we’re not going to have weird wording cuz it’s like kind of gets misleading all right radioactive decay of uranium 238 these elements are decaying and releasing energy as gamma radiation okay 238 so right when I start to see uranium stuff I’m going to say okay like maybe we should go to our chart here so here’s uranium 238 all right let’s see what it says here which set of terms constructs a correct explanation that describes the relationship between radioactive decay and the cycling of matter and flow within the Earth’s interior okay let’s see the radioactive decay of unstable isotopes generates let’s see new energy every thousand years no new energy every halfife maybe yes new energy continuously or periodically these elements are decaying and releasing energy as gamma radiation reactants products so it is happening it actually is continuously um every halfife is just when the halflife is going to be uh when the material is going to be 50% less of that material so it is going to be I’m going to go with two and then we’re going to providing heat yes to the mantle material this creates a convection current first of all convection currents in the mantle for C means this is the only right answer automatically which is expressed as any motion of the crust so two is going to be the best answer so honestly even if you didn’t know A which was the tricky one in my opinion C is the only one that this would work with so that makes this pretty easy i’ll make that three out of 10 so it’s going to be row two all right we got three different rocks we got ignous sedimentary and metamorphic which of these rocks would be found in abundance at the tectonic boundary on Iceland okay so we got to go to Iceland we looked at that now if you knew automatically that this was diverging and there’s a magma chamber underneath you would know that that’s going to be made from lava and magma so it’s going to be ignous so that you just literally have to know for content so ignous rocks and we could say ignous rocks form from the pooling and solidification of magma and lava so because that’s content I’m going to rate that the highest 6 out of 10 like if you didn’t know that ignous rocks form from magma and lava you’re not going to get it based on the movement of the tectonic plates on Iceland showed on image one which model shows the direction of the convection occurrence okay this is so easy because we need Iceland to go we need it to be separating so if you look at this one model B just sticks out cuz this one’s going that way from Iceland to the left of Iceland this one’s going right that’s the correct answer this one’s going left and this one’s going left so that’s wrong this one’s going towards there and down there this is very wrong and this is going right and this is going right so that’s wrong so the answer to this is model B that one was so easy i would literally give that a 1 out of 10 write the letter of the model on the line and construct an explanation oh okay great so we could say model B the convection currents are causing The two plates to both move away from Iceland creating a divergent plate boundary um so I didn’t see that you had to write an explanation for this i thought you just had to choose so I’ll bump it up to two out of 10 just because we had to write that out all right well that was that six cluster right there uh I thought overall pretty straightforward honestly so you know we’re we’re we’re hoping that that’s what it’s going to be like all right thanks for studying with me i’ll catch you on the next one good luck