By Peter Davis

Plate tectonics what's the deal?

• Plate tectonics is the Movement of plates
on the Earth’s crust
• What's crust? Crust is the very topmost
layer of the Earth And is made up of
mostly granite, basalt, and common
sediment.
• Beneath the crust is the mantle which is
solid yet it can move like a liquid this is
what's responsible for plate tectonics.
 Journey to the center of the Earth
first stop crust.
• The crust is composed of many floating
plates.
• These plates have both continents and
sea floor and they move using a complex
system of dividers.
• Crust is the thinnest layer and its lower
part is the Lithosphere which is partly
molten.
Journey to the center of the earth
First stop crust.
 The Mantle
• The mantle makes up a majority of the the
Earth’s interior and is the main thing responsible
for Plate tectonics.
• The top part of the mantle is the Asthenosphere
which is the part which is solid yet can flow like
really hot plastic.
• The Asthenosphere has convection currents
which scientists are still trying to figure out how
they got there.
• The rest of the mantle is pretty much solid
 How the crust moves
• The crust moves by using a system of
dividers.
• Firstly you have Divergent boundaries
which are like deep cracks (called rifts) in
the ground were magma wells up and
cools creating new sea floor. The ground
slowly spreads apart and a plate grows.
 Sea Floor
• The sea floor is made of basalt and sediment.
• Basalt is formed when hot rock is cooled
extremely quickly, Basalt is denser than granite
which is what continents are mostly made of.
• Sediment is the Degraded bodies of animals as
well as waste and dirt. Sediment once put under
enough pressure becomes sedimentary rock
and forms fossils.
 Convergent
• Then you have 3 types of convergent plate
boundaries which is when the crust
crushes together Plates and one plate has
to descend beneath another plate and
slowly descends into the mantle and
melts.
 Transform Boundaries
• Trans form boundaries neither create nor
destroy plates but simply move them back
and forth.
 Why should you believe this?
• Why should you even begin to remotely believe
this preposterous idea?
• You should because scientists have found
Plenty of evidence that this theory is correct.
• Firstly do you remember the sediment I was
talking about, on the ocean floor? Well when
plates grind together the sediment and
sedimentary rock scrape of the dense basalt and
fold up into mountains. Scientists know this
because the have found sea creature fossils on
the tops of mountains!
 Also….
• A scientific team boarded a very special
ship called the Glomar Challenger which
was going to drill 3 MILES down in the
ocean! They found that their were stripes
of rocks on either side of the rift identical in
age.
• This confirmed that the sea floor was
spreading in opposite directions!
 Why should we care?
• Plate tectonics is responsible for the natural
disasters that we consider most deadly.
• Earth quakes are caused by transform
boundaries and if you know if you live near a
plate boundary you can be prepared.
• Volcanoes sprout up at subduction zones
because as the plate melts it forms excess
magma which creates fresh volcanoes Hawaii is
one such place.
 Who came up with this?
• The main founder of this theory was Alfred
Wegener who thought of this because he found
that belts of fossils and natural resources
crossed over to distant continents. Also he noted
that certain continents seemed as though they fit
together.
• He concluded that there had once been a super
continent called Pangea.
• This was dismissed my the scientific community
because Alfred could not explain how or why the
continents had moved.
 Then came…..
• THE GLOMAR CHALLENGER!!!
• The Glomar Challenger Finally Proved
Wegener’s theory by providing solid proof that
the continents had moved and showing how the
sea floor spread and how it subducted.
• Also sonar had just become available allowing
us to map the sea floor and further proved the
theory.
• This also shows that to be a scientific theory
more than one person has to be able to reach
the same conclusion of the theory and rrecreate
the results.
 In Conclusion
• Theories are not just “made up”
• Plate tectonics is real
• Plate tectonics affects most of the world
• The Earth has 4 layers
• The sea floor is constantly spreading.
 Pictures given by…
• Earth cut away slide 3 given by
• mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/%7Ell125/en/struct.htm
Plate map slide 5 given by
• www.geography-site.co.uk/.../earth/tect.html
• Pangea map slide 15 given by
• geology.csupomona.edu/.../Gsc101/Plate.html
• Glomar Challenger Slide 17 was given by the
U.S. Geological Society Web Page