Thanks for your great question! Earth is made up of three layers (although geologists usually think of it as four layers). Those layers are: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core. The crust is the outermost layer of Earth, and it is the one we live on.

You can think of the crust as a thin shell that covers the earth. The thickness of the crust ranges from around 7 km to up to 70 km, depending on where on Earth you are. The crust is very thin compared to the other layers of Earth. In fact, if the earth was the size of a balloon, the crust would be about the thickness of the balloon’s skin. Below the crust is the mantle. The mantle is much hotter than the crust and is 2,885 km thick! The mantle is almost completely solid, but over very long periods of time it flows slowly. At the center of the earth is the core, which is made up of a liquid outer core and a solid inner core. The outer core is liquid because temperatures are so high in the center of the earth that the rocks stay melted. The inner core is under so much pressure that it is solid, even though it is very very hot.

The layers of the earth include the core (at the very center of the earth), the mantle (which surrounds the core) and then the crust. We live on the crust.

We live on the surface of the crust, underneath the atmosphere.