What are 4 features caused by plate tectonics?
Deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, island arcs, submarine mountain ranges, and fault lines are examples of features that can form along plate tectonic boundaries.
What are the main characteristics of plate tectonics?
The theory of plate tectonics states that the Earth’s solid outer crust, the lithosphere, is separated into plates that move over the asthenosphere, the molten upper portion of the mantle. Oceanic and continental plates come together, spread apart, and interact at boundaries all over the planet.
What are the types of plate tectonics?
There are three kinds of plate tectonic boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries.
What are the factors that cause tectonic plates to move?
The plates can be thought of like pieces of a cracked shell that rest on the hot, molten rock of Earth’s mantle and fit snugly against one another. The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other.
What is the geologic features prompted to the development of plate tectonics?
The driving force behind plate tectonics is convection in the mantle. Hot material near the Earth’s core rises, and colder mantle rock sinks.
What are the causes of plate tectonic?
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.
What causes transform plate boundary explain?
A transform plate boundary occurs when two plates slide past each other, horizontally. A well-known transform plate boundary is the San Andreas Fault, which is responsible for many of California’s earthquakes. The movement of Earth’s tectonic plates shape the planet’s surface.
What is the main cause of plate tectonics?
Geologists have hypothesized that the movement of tectonic plates is related to convection currents in the earth’s mantle. Tremendous heat and pressure within the earth cause the hot magma to flow in convection currents. These currents cause the movement of the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s crust.
What kind of features form along plate boundaries?
Deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, island arcs, submarine mountain ranges, and fault lines are examples of features that can form along plate tectonic boundaries. Volcanoes are one kind of feature that forms along convergent plate boundaries, where two tectonic plates collide and one moves beneath the other. This photo shows an explosion
Why do tectonic plates stick to each other?
They cause earthquakes because edges of tectonic plates are jagged rather than smooth. As the plats grind past each other, the jacked edges strike each other, catch, and stick, “locking” the plates in place for a time. Because the plates are locked together without moving, a lot of stress builds up at the fault line.
How are volcanoes formed at plate tectonic boundaries?
As the sinking plate moves deeper into the mantle, fluids are released from the rock causing the overlying mantle to partially melt. The new magma (molten rock) rises and may erupt violently to form volcanoes, often building arcs of islands along the convergent boundary.
What happens when two continental plates collide?
Instead, a collision between two continental plates crunches and folds the rock at the boundary, lifting it up and leading to the formation of __ mountains and mountain ranges ________________ . Fill in the type of crust converging in the image below.