Because different materials have different refractive indices, light changes speed when passing from one material to another. This causes the light to bend (refraction) at an angle that depends on the change in refractive index between the materials. The greater the difference, the higher the angle of refraction.

The crust and the rigid lithosphere (upper mantle) is made up of approximately thirty separate plates. These plates more very slowly on the slightly more liquid mantle (asthenosphere) beneath them. This movement has resulted in continental drift which is the gradual movement of land masses across Earth's surface. Continental drift is a very slow process, occurring over hundreds of millions of years.

In the mesosphere, temperature again drops as altitude increases until the coldest point in the Earth's atmosphere, the mesopause, is reached where temperatures fall to −225 °F (−143 °C).

Mass is the amount of matter something has while weight is the force exerted on an object's mass by gravity.  So, although a person's mass doesn't change when going from the Earth to the Moon, their weight will decrease because the force of the Moon's gravity is much less than that of Earth.

The traits represented by genes are inherited independently of each other  (one from the male and one from the female gamete) and a trait can be dominant or recessive.  A dominant trait will be expressed when paired with a recessive trait while two copies of a recessive trait (one from each parent) must be present for the recessive trait to be expressed.