Earth's Layers
The thinnest and solid outermost layer of Earth.
What is the crust?
The hypothesis that a single large landmass broke up into smaller pieces to form the continents that eventually moved to their present locations.
What is continental drift?
The boundary between tectonic plates that are colliding.
What is a convergent boundary?
The process by which oceanic crust sinks beneath a deep-ocean trench and back into the mantle at a convergent plate boundary.
What is subduction?
The shape and size of the land features on Earth's surface.
What is topography?
A dense sphere of solid iron and nickel at the center of Earth.
What is the inner core?
The process by which new oceanic crust forms when magma rises to Earth's surface at mid-ocean ridges and solidifies, as older, existing seafloor moves away from the ridge.
What is seafloor spreading?
The boundary between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other.
What is a divergent boundary?
A deep valley that forms where two continental plates move apart.
What is a rift valley?
A line on a topographic map that connects points of equal elevation.
What is a contour line?
The thick layer of hot rock between the crust and core that makes up the bulk of the Earth.
What is the mantle?
Theory that Earth's plates are in slow, constant motion, driven by convection currents in the mantle.
What is plate tectonics?
The boundary between tectonic plates that are sliding past each other horizontally.
What is a transform boundary?
A break in a body of rock or crust.
What is a fault?
A line on a topographic map that connects points of equal elevation.
What is contour interval?
The rotating, liquid iron and nickel layer below the mantle that creates Earth's magnetic field.
What is the outer core?
Evidence that supports seafloor spreading; Earth's magnetic north pole and magnetic south pole switch positions, causing a change in the direction in which magnetic minerals align in the seafloor.
What are magnetic reversals?
An underwater mountain chain where new seafloor is formed; located at a divergent boundary.
What is a mid-ocean ridge?
Landform that is created by a collision involving an oceanic plate where one plate melts and magma rises up through Earth's surface.
What is a volcano?
A thicker contour line that is labeled with elevation of that contour line.
What is index contour line?
Layers of the mantle.
What is lithosphere, asthenosphere, and mesosphere?
A section of the lithosphere that slowly moves over the asthenosphere, consisting of pieces of continental and oceanic crust.
What is a tectonic plate?
A mountain that forms as two continental crust collide; rock is compressed bend into large folds.
What are folded mountains?
A deep valley that forms where two plates collide.
What is a trench?
Difference between the highest and lowest elevations in a particular area.
What is relief?