Crust, of the Earth

What is the Earth's crust? The Earth's crust is the rocky surface layer of the Earth.

A diagram showing the Earth's crust.

The rocky planets, and our Moon, have rocky crusts. Some moons such as Europa, a Moon of Jupiter, have an icy crust.

A planet or moon is not made entirely of the substances in the crust. There are other layers below the crust, and these are made of other materials. For example, the Earth's crust has a layer called the mantle below it. This is made of hot rock which flows very slowly.

Video: Showing the movement of crustal plates.

Explore these further resources...

(These links take you to other parts of our web site, never to outside locations.)

You can search in these books:


You can look in this topic for more books, videos and teacher resources:

Jump to Mountain toolkit screen
The toolkit screen link will take you to a library containing a selection of:
an i-topic, more books, pictures, videos and teacher's stuff related to the search word.
© Curriculum Visions 2021