Download Sea floor spreading= the process by which new oceanic crust is

Team of Scientists Unveil “Earth Shattering” New Observations to
Support Plate Tectonic Theory!
By Kinzie Sikkema
We all live on the Earth, but most of us don’t care to learn about it. It
is an amazing planet, constantly moving through space. But, did you
know that it is also changing on itself?
The crust of the earth is divided into
different “sections” called plates. There
are continental crust and oceanic crust.
Sometimes when one plate carrying
oceanic crust and another plate
carrying continental crust meet and bump together, a subduction zone
forms. The oceanic crust (the sinking crust) is denser than the continental crust (floating
crust), so the oceanic plate dives down beneath the continental plate. This forms a trench.
As the sinking crust sinks, it melts and is destroyed. This is called
oceanic crust destruction. As the crust melts, the magma needs a
place to go. It is forced upwards
and forms volcanoes and
mountain ranges fairly close to
the shore. Won’t we eventually
run out of crust you may ask?
Well, at the mid-ocean ridge, new crust is being formed
through the process of sea-floor spreading. Mantle
convection causes new hot rock to be forced to the surface of
the crust. This forces the older rock away from the ridge, and
sometimes it gets pushed down under a plate of continental
crust, forming a subduction zone. The fact that mountains,
volcanoes, trenches, ridges, and faults exist proves that plate
tectonics are moving.
Check out www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics,
www.kidsgeo.com/geology-for-kids/0043-plate-tectonics.php, &
www.platetectonics.com/book/page_12.asp for more
information.