Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Tectonic Plates
- Earth's surface
- Centre of the Earth is a ball
of solid iron and nickel
called the core
- Around the core is the
mantle, which is
semi-molten rock that
moves very slowly
- The outer layer of the Earth is the crust.
About 20km thin
- Continental
- Less dense
- Thicker
- Oceanic
- More dense
- Thinner
- Plates move because the rock in the
mantle underneath is moving
- Where plates meet are called
boundries or plate margins
- Plate margins
- Destructive
- Two plates moving
towards each other
- Eg. along the coast of Japan
- Where an oceanic plate meets a continental plate, the denser
oceanic plate is forced down into the mantle and destroyed
- Often creates volcanoes and ocean trenches
- Where two continental
plates meet, the plates
smash together but no crust
is destroyed
- Constructive
- Where two plates are moving
away from each other
- Eg. at the mid-Atlantic ridge
- Magma rises from the mantle to fill
the gap and cools, creating new crust
- Conservative
- Two plates moving sideways past each other or
moving in the same direction but as different speeds
- E.g. along the west coast of the USA
- Crust isn't created or destroyed