Download Plate Tectonics Vocabulary Words

Plate Tectonics Vocabulary
Words
Mary George King
Core 1
1-24-12
Inner Core
• A ball of hot, solid metals
• The inner core is very, very hot.
• There is enormous pressure on the center
of the Earth.
• The core is Earth’s densest region.
• It is made up of two regions, the inner core
and the outer core.
Outer Core
• It is a layer of liquid metals that surrounds
the inner core.
• The temperature is lower than the inner
core.
• The pressure is lower.
• Since it is has lower pressure the metal
remains liquid.
• The outer core isn’t as hot as the inner
core.
Mantle
• The layer of the earth between the crust
and the core.
• The mantle is the third level of the Earth.
• The mantle is the thickest layer of the
Earth.
• The mantle is similar to an igneous rock.
• The mantle is below the inner core and the
outer core.
Crust
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The outer layer of the Earth.
All life on Earth is right there.
It is the coldest layer of the Earth.
The crust makes up less than 1% of the
Earth’s mass.
• We are on the Crust right now.
Lithosphere
• The crust and upper mantle of the earth.
• The Earth consists of many layers ranging from
the mantle to the atmosphere, and all of it works
together perfectly.
• In other words, the lithosphere is made up of solid
rock, which is the Earth's outer surface, and
magma, the hot liquid center of the Earth..
• There are some interesting facts about the
lithosphere, including how much it is responsible
for Earth's changes; in fact, the Earth wouldn't
change at all if it weren't for it.
• The lithosphere is made up of more than one plate
Asthenosphere
• A zone of the earth's mantle that lies beneath the
lithosphere and consists of several hundred
kilometers of deformable rock.
• About 85 kilometers thick.
• A layer of the Earth that lies at a depth of 60--150
mi (100--250 km) beneath Earth's surface.
• It was first named in 1914 by the British geologist
J. Barrell
• This layer is about 85 kilometers thick! 
Tectonic Plates
• the two sub-layers of the earth's crust
(lithosphere) that move, float, and sometimes
fracture and whose interaction causes
continental drift, earthquakes, volcanoes,
mountains, and oceanic trenches
• Convergent plates move towards one another
• Divergent plates separate from each other
• Alfred Wegener founded Pangaea, a super
continent that was supposedly all of the
seven continents put together
• Tectonic Plates are under the Crust.
Continental Drift
• the theory that the earth's continents move gradually over the
surface of the planet on a substratum of magma. The presentday configuration of the continents is thought to be the result
of the fragmentation of a single landmass, Pangaea, that
existed 200 million years ago
• According to the theory of continental drift, the world was
made up of a single continent through most of geologic time.
• That continent eventually separated and drifted apart,
forming into the seven continents we have today.
• The first comprehensive theory of continental drift was
suggested by the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener in
1912.
• Continental Drift is a theory.
Pangaea
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A hypothetical supercontinent that included all the landmasses of the earth
before the Triassic Period. Pangaea broke apart during the Triassic and
Jurassic Periods, separating into Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
Pangaea Early in the twentieth century the German scientist Alfred
Wegener postulated that, commencing in the Mesozoic and continuing up to
the present, a huge supercontinent, ‘Pangaea’ (meaning ‘all land’), had
rifted and the fragmented components had moved apart as a result; this
soon came to be generally known as continental drift.
His interpretation was that South America and Africa began to separate in
the Cretaceous, as did North America and Europe, but North America and
Europe had retained contact in the north as late as the Quaternary.
The Indian Ocean had begun to open up in the Jurassic but the principal
movements took place in the Cretaceous and Tertiary.
Pangaea was a and is a supercontinent.
Convection Current
• Mass movement of subcrustal or mantle
material as the result of temperature
variations
• A convection current requires a heat source
and a fluid that can circulate to transfer heat.
• In the atmosphere, the heat source is the
sun and the fluid is air.
• Inside the Earth, the heat source is the core
and the fluid is magma
• Convection Currents are under the Earth.
Divergent Boundary
• A tectonic boundary where two plates are moving away from
each other and new crust is forming from magma that rises to
the Earth's surface between the two plates. The middle of the
Red Sea and the mid-ocean ridge (running the length of the
Atlantic Ocean) are divergent plate boundaries.
• Divergent plate boundaries are locations where plates are
moving away from one another.
• This occurs above rising convection currents. The rising
current pushes up on the bottom of the lithosphere, lifting it
and flowing laterally beneath it.
• This lateral flow causes the plate material above to be
dragged along in the direction of flow.
• Divergent Boundary deals with two plates.
Convergent Boundary
• A tectonic boundary where two plates are moving toward each
other. If the two plates are of equal density, they usually push up
against each other, forming a mountain chain. If they are of unequal
density, one plate usually sinks beneath the other in a subduction
zone. The western coast of South America and the Himalayan
Mountains are convergent plate boundaries.
• Convergent plate boundaries form where lithospheric plates collide
along their boundaries with each other.
• Such collisions cause extensive deformation at the Earth's crust,
leading to the formation of volcanoes, the lifting of mountain ranges
and the creation of deep oceanic trenches.
• Convergent plate boundaries are also characterized by extensive
earthquake activities, which occur along the sections of the NazcaPacific convergent boundary in Chile and Peru, for example.
• Convergent boundaries also deal with two plates like Divergent
boundaries.
Transform Boundary
• where 2 plates slide past each other,
happens at continental vs. oceanic plates
• Places where plates slide past each other are called
transform boundaries.
• Since the plates on either side of a transform boundary are
merely sliding past each other and not tearing or crunching
each other, transform boundaries lack the spectacular
features found at convergent and divergent boundaries.
• Instead, transform boundaries are marked in some places by
linear valleys along the boundary where rock has been
ground up by the sliding.
• Transform plates are when two plates slide across each other.
Magnetic Reversal
• A change in the Earth's magnetic field.
• The Earth has a magnetic field, as can be
seen by using a magnetic compass. It is
mainly generated in the very hot molten core
of the planet and has probably existed
throughout most of the Earth's lifetime. The
magnetic field is largely that of a dipole, by
which we mean that it has one North pole
and one South pole.
• Magnetic Reversal is a change in the Earths
magnetic fields.
Hot Spot
• a place in the upper mantle of the earth at which hot magma
from the lower mantle upwells to melt through the crust
usually in the interior of a tectonic plate to form a volcanic
feature; also: a place in the crust overlying a hot spot
• Hot spot, Region of the Earth’s upper mantle that upwells to
melt through the crust to form a volcanic feature.
• Most volcanoes that cannot be ascribed either to a
subduction zone or to seafloor spreading at midocean ridges
are attributed to hot spots.
• The 5% of known world volcanoes not closely related to such
plate margins (see plate tectonics) are regarded as hot-spot
volcanoes.
• Hot spots are in the upper mantle!! 
Subduction
• The sideways and downward movement of the edge of a plate
of the earth's crust into the mantle beneath another plate.
• Geology is the science that comprises the study of the solid
Earth and the processes by which it is shaped and changed.
• Geology provides primary evidence for plate tectonics, the
history of life and evolution, and past climates..., subduction
is the process that takes place at convergent
boundariesConvergent boundary
• In plate tectonics, a convergent boundary, also known as a
destructive plate boundary , is an actively deforming region
where two tectonic plates or fragments of lithosphere move
toward one another and collide...
• Subduction is the sideways movement on the edge of a plate.
Conclusion