Plate Tectonics Basics
The scientific theory that explains the movement of Earth's rigid surface plates.
What is plate tectonics?
Compared to continental crust, this type of crust is thinner and denser.
What is oceanic crust?
Earth formed this many years ago.
What is 4.6 billion years ago?
These processes build up land or sea-floor features.
What are constructive processes?
These large landforms can be created by plate collisions.
What are mountains?
This is the movement of tectonic plates away from each other.
What is a divergent boundary?
The ages of this type of crust increase with distance from a mid-ocean ridge.
What is oceanic crust?
Scientists use this technique to determine the age of ancient materials.
What is radiometric dating?
These processes wear down Earth’s surface.
What are destructive processes?
Valleys and plateaus are examples of landforms created by these processes.
What are constructive processes?
This underwater mountain range forms where new crust is made.
What is a mid-ocean ridge?
This process creates new oceanic crust by pushing plates apart.
What is plate spreading?
Or
What is a divergent boundary?
These space rocks help scientists learn about the early solar system.
What are meteorites?
This force creates land through volcanic material and tectonic movements.
What is volcanism and tectonic uplift?
Ridges, trenches, and seamounts are features found here.
What is the sea floor?
This explains how mountains form at convergent plate boundaries.
What is the collision of two plates?
Or
What is a convergent boundary?
This is the reason the central U.S. contains much older crust.
What is a consequence of crust recycling along plate boundaries?
The study of other planetary surfaces helps us understand this planet’s early history.
What is Earth?
This destructive process pulls a tectonic plate beneath another.
What is subduction?
These coastal features are created by erosion.
What are cliffs, sea stacks, and beaches?
Other answers may be acceptable
This landmass contains an ancient core due to complex plate interactions.
What is the North American continental crust?
These features result from plates pulling apart, pushing together, or sliding past one another.
What are plate boundaries?
Scientists use the number and size of these features on planets to understand solar system history.
What are impact craters?
This process lays down sediment and builds new land features.
What is deposition?
The interaction of constructive and destructive forces shapes this.
What is Earth’s surface?