The result of all this? Large rocks are worn down to small particles.

When the particles are broken off a rock and stay in the same area, it is called weathering.

When the particles are carried somewhere else, it is called erosion.

2. Transportation. Eroded rock particles are carried away by wind or by rain, streams, rivers, and oceans.

3. Deposition. As rivers get deeper or flow into the ocean, their current slows down, and the rock particles (mixed with soil) sink and become a layer of sediment. Often the sediment builds up faster than it can be washed away, creating little islands and forcing the river to break up into many channels in a delta.

4. Compaction & Cementation. As the layers of sediment stack up (above water or below), the weight and pressure compacts the bottom layers.

(Try making a stack of catalogs and watch how the bottom one gets squished as you add more on top – this is the same idea as the compaction of layers of sediment.)

Dissolved minerals fill in the small gaps between particles and then solidify, acting as cement. After years of compaction and cementation, the sediment turns into sedimentary rock.

5. Metamorphism. Over very long periods of geologic time, sedimentary or igneous rocks end up buried deep underground, usually because of the movement of plate tectonics. While underground, these rocks are exposed to high heat and pressure, which changes them into metamorphic rock. This tends to happen where tectonic plates come together: the pressure of the plates squish the rock that is heated from hot magma below.

(Tectonic plates are large sections of the earth’s crust that move separately from each other. Their movement often results in earthquakes.)

6. Rock Melting. Can you imagine ‘rock hard’ rocks melting? That’s what they do in the depths of the earth! Metamorphic rocks underground melt to become magma. When a volcano erupts, magma flows out of it. (When magma is on the earth’s surface, it is called lava.) As the lava cools it hardens and becomes igneous rock. As soon as the new igneous rock is formed, the processes of weathering and erosion begin, starting the whole cycle over again!