Plate tectonics | Definition, Theory, Facts, & Evidence | Britannica
2024年11月20日 · Plate motions cause mountains to rise where plates push together, or converge, and continents to fracture and oceans to form where plates pull apart, or diverge. …
Plate tectonics - Wikipedia
Tectonic plates are able to move because of the relative density of oceanic lithosphere and the relative weakness of the asthenosphere. Dissipation of heat from the mantle is the original …
What Causes the Tectonic Plates to Move? | HowStuffWorks
2023年11月1日 · It's how mountains form, volcanoes erupt and continents drift apart. So, what causes the tectonic plates to move? Discover the origins of the continental drift theory and …
Understanding plate motions [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]
We can measure how fast tectonic plates are moving today, but how do scientists know what the rates of plate movement have been over geologic time? The oceans hold one of the key …
Earth's Shifting Tectonic Plates - Education
2023年10月19日 · Plate tectonics is driven by a variety of forces: dynamic movement in the mantle, dense oceanic crust interacting with the ductile asthenosphere, even the rotation of …
Plate Tectonics - Education
2024年3月7日 · Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that explains how major landforms are created as a result of Earth’s subterranean movements. The theory, which solidified in the …
What is Tectonic Shift? - NOAA's National Ocean Service
Earth’s crust, called the lithosphere, consists of 15 to 20 moving tectonic plates. The plates can be thought of like pieces of a cracked shell that rest on the hot, molten rock of Earth’s mantle and …
Plate Tectonics Information and Facts | National Geographic
The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent, where plates move into one another; divergent, where plates move apart; and transform, where...
Evidence of Plate Motions - Geology (U.S. National Park Service)
2020年2月11日 · Earth’s outer shell is broken into tectonic plates that move relative to one another. The plates rip apart at divergent plate boundaries, crash together at convergent plate …
Plate Tectonics—The Unifying Theory of Geology
2020年2月11日 · Plate tectonics has revolutionized the way we view large features on the surface of the Earth. Earth’s internal processes were previously thought to operate in a vertical …