Download Oreo Cookie - Plate Tectonics Lab INTRODUCTION: The word

Oreo Cookie - Plate Tectonics Lab
INTRODUCTION: The word tectonics comes from the Greek word “tekton,” meaning builder.
Plate tectonics suggests that large features on the Earth’s surface, such as continents, ocean
trenches, mountain ranges, mid ocean ridges, and volcanoes, are “built” from interactions along
the edges of large plates of Earth’s outer shell.
This outer shell is also called the _______________________, from the Greek word, “lithos,”
meaning stone.
 It consists of the _________________, which is broken into pieces, or plates, and the
upper part of the __________________________.
Just below this hard surface is a softer, more flexible part of the mantle called the
____________________________, coming from the Greek word, “athenos,” meaning weak.
The ____________________ floats on top of the ______________________. Scientists
believe the movement of convection currents in the asthenosphere is the major cause of plate
movement in the lithosphere.
In this lab we will model three types of plate movements.
Part 1:
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Carefully twist the upper and lower cookie halves, separating the two pieces.
Slide the upper cookie over the creamy filling. This motion is similar to the rigid
lithosphere plate sliding over the softer asthenosphere.
Break the upper cookie in half.
What does this breaking represent?
Part 2:
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Push down on the two halves of the broken cookie top and slide them apart.
This is called a ___________________________ plate boundary, from the word
meaning “to pull apart.”
What happens to the creamy filling? ________________________________________
Take notes from page 160 on Divergent
Boundaries (“spreading boundaries”):
Part 3:
Push the two cookie halves back together.
This is called a __________________________ plate boundary, from the word meaning
“to push together.”
 What happens as the cookie halves push against each other? ___________________
_____________________________________________________________________
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Take notes from page 161 on the three types of Convergent Boundaries (“Colliding
Boundaries”):
Part 4:
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With the cookie halves pushed against each other, slide them sideways, against each
other.
This is called a _______________________________ plate boundary.
What do you notice happening along the edge of the cookies? __________________
________________________________________________
Take notes from page 161 on Transform
Boundaries (“sliding boundaries”):