PLATE TECTONICS

Made by Harshul Kamlesh

Class 8-A
Sir Padampat Singhania School

Theory
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that Earth’s outer shell is divided into several
plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer over the core. the plate act
like a hard and rigid shell compared to earth ‘s mantle. This strong layer is called
lithosphere, which is to 100 km (60 miles) thick, according to encyclopedia

The lithosphere includes the crust and outer part of the crust and outer part of the
mantle.
History
The theory was first proposed by scientist Alfred Wegener in 1912. There are nine
major plates according to world Atlas. These plates are named after the landforms
found on them. The nine major plates are north American, Pacific, Eurasian, African,
Indo-Australian, Indian, South American and Antarctic.

How Plate Tectonics Work

The driving force behind plates tectonics is convection in the mantle. Hot material near
the Earth’s core rises, and colder mantle rock sinks. “It’s a kind of a pot boiling on a
stove”- Nicolas Vander Elst, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont -Doherty
Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. The convection drives plate tectonics
though a combination of pushing and spreading apart at mid-ocean ridges and pulling
and sinking downwards at subduction zones. Hot magma wells up at the ridges,
forming new ocean crust and shoving the plates apart. At subduction zones, two
tectonic plates move and on slides beneath the other back into the mantle, the layer
underneath the crust. The cold sinking plate pulls the crust behind it downward.

TYPES OF TECTONIC MOVEMENT

A. Spreading Rifts
Spreading Rifts are being pulled apart at Ocean expressing rapes the pressure
beneath the crust is reduced, allowing the hot mantle rock to melt and erupt as the
basalt lava. As the rift widens, more lava erupts and hardens, adding new rock to the
ocean floor. These boundaries are marked by a network of mid-ocean ridges. Similar
spreading rifts can divide continents, forming see such as the Red Sea which may
eventually grow into oceans.

B. Subduction zones
The plate boundaries where one plate of the crust is dividing beneath and other are
known as subduction zones. As the crust is dragged down, often creating a deep
ocean trench, part of it melts and erupts, forming Chains of volcanoes. The movement
also triggers earthquakes. In some subduction zones, one plate of ocean floor is
slipping beneath and other. In others, Oceanic crust is grinding beneath continents
and pushing up mountains.

C. Transform Faults
The zigzags that interrupt the lines of the spreading mid-ocean ridges and other ribs
in the figure C- are transform faults -parts of the plate boundaries where plates are
simply sliding past each other. Because of this, crust is neither destroyed not created.
But the movement can still be destructive because the two sides of the fault often
together, build up tension and then snap in a sudden movement that causes an
earthquake.

MAJOR TECTONIC PLATES