The Earth’s lithosphere, which includes the crust and upper mantle, is made up of a series of pieces, or tectonic plates, that move slowly over time.. A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. Along these boundaries, earthquakes are common and magma (molten rock) rises from the Earth’s mantle to the surface, solidifying to create …

Plate Tectonics The concepts of continental drift and seafloor spreading are united into a more encompassing theory known as plate tectonics. This far reaching theory has become the basis for viewing most geologic processes — mountain …

10/06/2020 · Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that explains how major landforms are created as a result of Earth’s subterranean movements. The theory, which solidified in the 1960s, transformed the earth sciences by explaining many phenomena, including mountain building events, volcanoes, and earthquakes. In plate tectonics, Earth’s outermost layer, or ...

Earth. The theory of plate tectonics links Earth’s internal processes to the distribution of continents and oceans; it is the big picture view of how the earth works. Plate tectonics reveals that the lithosphere is divided into eight major pieces ("plates") with several smaller plates (Fig. 2). The plates are mobile, moving in constant, slow motion measured in rates of centimeters per …

Very thin. The part you live on top of. Separated into plates (when they knock against each other Earthquakes happen.) The Mantle: The largest layer (1800 miles thick) Flows because of very high temperatures. The movement of the plates is caused by this flowing. The Outer Core: Composed of the metals Nickel and Iron.

At the edges of the plates we see the ridges and trenches that gave the first clues to Plate Tectonics. There are a few rules that control what happens along these edges, or plate boundaries as they are called. The rules of Plate Tectonics . 1. Continental crust is less dense, or lighter, than Oceanic crust so it doesn't sink.

21/08/2015 · Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into several plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core. The plates act like a hard and rigid shell compared to Earth's mantle. This strong outer layer is called the lithosphere.

In the framework of plate tectonics, the surface is represented by rigid plates separated along discrete plate boundary faults (1, 2), ... In the area of collision 1, mantle velocities in the vicinity of the detaching slab are faster on the right-hand side than on the left-hand side, showing persisting mantle-driven convergence.

18/03/2015 · new crust begins to spread to either side of the ridge. As it spreads, it dives under another plate and is subducted back into the upper mantle. At some geologic time in the future, the recycled crust appears again at a mid-ocean ridge. There are three types of plate interaction • Divergent Plate Boundaries • Convergent Plate Boundaries