PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS - SHAPE OF EARTH

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS - Shape OF EARTH

Chemical composition : The shape of Earth is approximately oblate spheroidal. Due to rotation, the Earth is flattened along the geographic axis and bulging around the equator. The diameter of the Earth at the equator is 43 kilometres (27 mi) larger than the pole-to-pole diameter. Thus the point on the surface farthest from Earth's center of mass is the summit of the equatorial Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador.The average diameter of the reference spheroid is 12,742 kilometres (7,918 mi). Local topography deviates from this idealized spheroid, although on a global scale these deviations are small compared to Earth's radius: The maximum deviation of only 0.17% is at the Mariana Trench (10,911 metres (35,797 ft) below local sea level), whereas Mount Everest (8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above local sea level) represents a deviation of 0.14%.

A little more than 47% of Earth's crust consists of oxygen.The most common rock constituents of the crust are nearly all oxides: chlorine, sulfur, and fluorine are the important exceptions to this and their total amount in any rock is usually much less than 1%. The principal oxides are silica, alumina, iron oxides, lime, magnesia, potash, and soda. The silica functions principally as an acid, forming silicates, and all the most common minerals of igneous rocks are of this nature. 99.22% of all rocks are composed of 11 oxides (see the table at right), with the other constituents occurring in minute quantities.Earth's mass is approximately 5.97×10²⁴ kg (5,970 Yg). It is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%),magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%), with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements. Due to mass segregation, the core region is estimated to be primarily composed of iron (88.8%), with smaller amounts of nickel (5.8%), sulfur (4.5%), and less than 1% trace elements.