How many major tectonic plates are there?
What causes tectonic plate movement?
Describe what happens to the plates at a divergent plate boundary and draw the movement with ARROWS in the box.
Describe what happens to the plates at a convergent plate boundary and draw the movement with ARROWS in the box.
Match the three types of CONVERGENT plate boundaries with their land formations
| Draggable item | arrow_right_alt | Corresponding Item |
|---|---|---|
Oceanic - Oceanic | arrow_right_alt | Mountains |
Continental - Continental | arrow_right_alt | Mountains, volcanoes |
Oceanic - Continental | arrow_right_alt | Trench, island arcs, volcanoes |
Describe what happens to the plates at a transform plate boundary and draw the movement with ARROWS in the box.
A zone of active volcanoes that encircles the Pacific Ocean
Why do hotspots occur?
At the boundaries between tectonic plates, sudden movements that are created when the plates slide past each other are called
What happens to magma at divergent boundaries?
What is the subduction zone?
Plates move in THREE basic ways. Let’s take a look at each.
Choose a cookie. Don’t eat it… yet!
· First, carefully remove the upper cookie (you must twist it!)
· Slide the upper cookie over the creamy filling. This motion simulates the movement of a rigid lithospheric plate over the softer asthenosphere.
· Next, break the upper cookie in half. As you do so, listen to the sound it makes.
What sound do you hear (describe it)?
What does that breaking represent?
Let’s look at divergent plate boundaries. Divergent means
Now push down on the two broken cookie halves and slide them apart. What happens to the creamy filling?
What does this represent?
Now let’s look at convergent plate boundaries. Convergent means to
Take the two cookie halves and slowly push them toward each other. What happens to the filling as the plates slide together?
What happens to the cookies as they push against each other?
What does this represent?
Now let’s look at a transform plate boundary. Try sliding the two cookie pieces laterally past one another, over the creamy filling. What do you notice about the cookie edges?
You can feel and hear that the “plates” do not slide smoothly past one another, but rather stick and then let go. This phenomenon in the real world is described as
Some of Earth’s landforms are created by hotspots where a plate rides over a fixed “plume” of hot mantle, creating a line of volcanoes. Imagine if a piece of hot, glowing coal were imbedded in the creamy filling – a chain of volcanoes would be burned into the overriding cookie. Name a location on Earth where this occurs.
