ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

IsoBase

Okay, so let's try to understand what is an isobase. Imagine you have a lot of rocks, and you want to organize them in a way that makes sense. You might put all the big rocks in one pile and all the little rocks in another pile. But what if you want to organize them by when they were formed, like putting the oldest rocks at the bottom and the youngest rocks at the top? This is where an isobase comes in.

An isobase is just a fancy word for a line that marks where one type of rock ends and another begins. It's like a boundary that helps us separate rock layers by age. When new rock forms on top of an old rock layer, we say that the new rock layer is "younger" than the old one. So an isobase can help us tell where the "younger" rock layer starts and where the "older" rock layer ends.

Think of it like layers of a cake. The bottom layer was made first, then the next layer was added on top, then another layer, and so on. The isobase would be the line that marks where one layer ends and another begins. It's like drawing a line between the chocolate layer and the vanilla layer of the cake. This helps us understand how the cake was made, and it helps us understand how the rocks were formed too.

Scientists use isobases to understand how the Earth has changed over time. They can look at the isobases to see where there was a big change in the environment that caused rocks to form differently. For example, if scientists see a big gap between two isobases, it might mean that there was a time when no new rocks were forming in that area because there was a flood or a volcano eruption.

So, basically an isobase just helps scientists organize rocks by age and understand how the Earth has changed over time. It's like a line that marks where one type of rock ends and another begins.