Plate tectonics
Terms
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- lithosphere
- rigid layer of Earth, about 100 km thick, made of the crust and upper part of the mantle
- crust
- the thin, outermost layer of the Earth - uppermost part of the lithosphere
- plates
- large sections of Earth's oceanic or continental crust and rigid upper mantle that moves around on the asthenosphere
- mantle
- the layer of Earth between the crust and the core
- Pangaea
- means "all land"
- plate tectonics
- theory that Earth's crust and upper mantle are broken into plates that float and move around
- divergent boundary
- boundary between two plates moving apart
- Earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains
- evidence of plate motion
- transform boundary
- where two plates slide past one another
- continental drift
- theory that continents have moved slowly to their current locations
- subduction zone
- place where oceanic plate sinks down into the asthenosphere at a convergent boundary
- sea floor spreading
- new seafloor formed when magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid-ocean ridge
- core
- the central, spherical part of the Earth below the mantle
- fault
- a break in the Earth's crust along which blocks of the Earth slide
- asthenosphere
- plastic like layer of Earth on which the lithosperic plates float and move around
- convergent boundary
- boundary between two plates moving together
- convection current
- current in the Earth's mantle that transfers heat in the Earth's interior - the driving force for plate tectonics