Download File - Flipped Out Science with Mrs. Thomas!

Station 8.9B
Concept: Plate Tectonics form Crustal Features
Performance Based Review
Glossary for TEKS
Asthenosphere
A plastic-like layer on which the lithospheric plates float and move around.
Convection Current
A current in Earth’s mantle that transfers heat in Earth’s interior and is the
driving force for plate tectonics.
Convergent Boundary
In plate tectonics, the boundary between two plates that are converging, or
moving towards one another.
Crustal Feature
Features created by plate tectonics including mountains (e.g. Himalayas),
trenches (e.g. Mariana trench), volcanoes (see the Ring of Fire), ocean
ridges (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and rift zones (regions lateral to a volcano that
lava flows from).
Divergent Boundary
In plate tectonics, the boundary between two plates that is diverging, or
moving apart.
Earthquake
The movement of the ground that occurs when rocks inside the Earth pass
their elastic limit, breaks suddenly, and experience elastic rebound.
Fault
A fracture that occurs when rocks change their shape.
Fault-block Mountains
Mountains formed when tension forces cause large blocks of crust to break
and tilt or slide down the broken surfaces of crust.
Fold
A form of strain in which rock layers bend, usually as a result of
compression.
Folded Mountains
Mountains that form when rock layers are squeezed together and uplifted.
Lithosphere
The rigid layer of Earth about 100km thick; made of the crust and a part of
the upper mantle.
Middle School Performance Based Review
Station 8.9B
Concept: Plate Tectonics form Crustal Features
Performance Based Review
Mid-ocean Ridge
A mid-ocean ridge is an underwater mountain range that extends through
the middle of most oceans, forms when forces within Earth spread the
seafloor apart. New ocean floor is created.
Plate Tectonics
The theory that Earth’s crust and upper mantle are broken into plates that
float and move around on a plastic-like layer on the mantle.
Rift Valley
A valley that forms on land where two plates are moving apart.
Rift Zone
A deep crack that forms between two tectonic plates that are pulling
away from each other.
Sea-floor Spreading
The process by which new oceanic lithosphere (sea floor) forms as magma
rises to Earth’s surface and solidifies at a mid-ocean ridge.
Subduction
The process by which one lithospheric plate moves beneath another as a
result of tectonic forces.
Subduction Zone
The region where one lithospheric plate moves under another one into the
asthenosphere.
Transform Boundary
A plate boundary where two plates slide past each other.
Tectonic Plate
A block of lithosphere that consists of the crust and the rigid, outermost part
of the mantle; also called lithospheric plate.
Trench
A long, narrow, and steep depression that forms on the ocean floor as a
result of subduction of a tectonic plate, that runs parallel to the trend of a
chain of volcanic islands or the coastline of a continent, and that may be as
deep as 11 km below sea level; also called an ocean trench or a deepocean trench.
Volcano
A cone-shaped hill formed when hot magma, solids, and gases erupt on
Earth’s surface.
Middle School Performance Based Review