Download Milky Way Plate Tectonics

Name_______________________________________
Milky Way Plate Tectonics
Step 1: Unwrap your Milky Way and GENTLY press the top of it with your finger until it cracks in multiple
places…if it is already cracked, even better!
1. QUICK DRAW: In the box below draw a “birds-eye” or top view of what your Milky Way looks like and
label it using the following vocabulary: tectonic plates, plate boundary
2. Which layer of Earth is actually cracked into many large and small tectonic plates similar to the chocolate of
your Milky Way?
Step 2: DIVERGENT BOUNDARY: GENTLY pull the bar apart, but DO NOT fully separate it into two
halves!
3. As you pulled the bar apart, what does the caramel represent coming up from the “mantle?”
4. QUICK DRAW: Draw a side view diagram of
your Milky Way in the box and label it using the
following vocabulary: rift valley
What other 4 landforms or events could be
occurring in your diagram?
5. As the magma cools at this divergent boundary, it allows __________ ___________ to form, or to be
more specific long underwater mountain chains called ____________________________________.
Step 3: CONVERGENT BOUNDARY: SLOWLY push your Milky back together returning it as close to
original as possible. Keep pushing SLOWLY in from the ends of the bar to force the plates together.
6. What landform do you see starting to form as you push your “plates” together? Be specific!
Keep pushing…can you get one chocolate layer to sink under the other one?
7. What is that called when one plate sinks beneath another?
8. QUICK DRAW: Draw a quick side view of your new
landforms and label your diagram using the appropriate
vocabulary for what you said you saw in YOUR model in
question #6.
9. Which type of convergent boundary, or boundaries, would form mountains? (Circle all correct answers)
Oceanic-Oceanic
Oceanic-Continental
Continental-Continental
10. Which type of convergent boundary, or boundaries would force one plate to sink under another plate? (Circle
all correct answers)
Oceanic-Oceanic
Oceanic-Continental
Continental-Continental
11. What landform do you see in YOUR Milky Way model right now? (Refer back to how you labeled your last
drawing/how you answered question #6) ________________________________________
Based on the land form you just wrote on the line above, which type of convergent boundary do you have?
(Circle according to YOUR answer – there may or may not be more than one choice)
Oceanic-Oceanic
Oceanic-Continental
Continental-Continental
12. Earthquakes occur at all types of plate boundaries, but which type of boundary might have deeper
earthquakes, divergent or convergent? (hint: Which type of boundary FORCES crust DOWN into the mantle).
Step 4: TRANSFORM BOUNDARY: With your fingers & thumbs on the long edges of bar, slide your right
hand forward, pull your left hand back. (moving half of the candy bar in one direction and half in the other
direction)
13. QUICK DRAW: Draw a quick sketch of your Milky Way
model now using the following vocabulary: fault, erosion
14. As your “plates” scrape past each other, what is the most
likely event to occur?
15. LISTENING CHECK:
New crust is being created at ______________________ boundaries, at the same
time that crust is being destroyed at ______________________ boundaries due to
_____________________, or when one plate sinks beneath another plate. This
explains why Earth doesn’t ________________________________________.
Eat Model
Now!