Plate Tectonics

Plate Tectonics could be a hard topic to understand but it's something that affects many things. For example, plates moving could cause many things to happen. Plates moving can cause earthquakes, form land forms, and they can even cause land to move.

When two plates come together they collide, this movement of plates is called convergent plate movement. Converging plates can cause many things but two of the most recognized things they do is they create volcanos and mountains. Valcanos are formed when an oceanic plate and a continental plate collide. The oceanic plate goes under the continental plate because it is more dense. The oceanic plate has magma under it and the pressure and heat of the magma causes cracks in it. The acidic magma from the mantle rises through the cracks and it keeps building up and building up forming a volcano. When two continental plates collide they form mountains. One of the plates is forced under the other. The pressure of the two plates causes the crust to fold and it creates mountain ranges.

Divergent plate movement is when plates move apart from each other. When they move apart magma from the mantle comes to the surface and solidifies, this process is called sea-floor spreading. When the magma keeps adding on it forms an oceanic ridge. Volcano's can form in divergent plate boundaries but they have small gentle eruptions, these volcano's are called submarine volcano's.

Transform plate boundaries slide past each other. The movement is not smooth because of rocks in between the plates. Sometimes the plates lock. The plates may lock but whats under them doesn't so this causes pressure and the pressure keeps building up and building up resulting in earthquakes.
Plate boundaries moving is something that is important us. We use earthquakes to give off energy to make seismic waves to see what the center of the Earth is made of and we use plate tectonics to explain the theory of Pangea.

The land on Earth moves it did thousands of years ago and it will keep moving. Scientist believe that millions of years ago all the continents that make up the world today were one massive super continent called Pangea. Not everybody believes the Pangea theory even though there is a lot of evidence to support it. Something that leads many people to believe in Pangea is that the continents look like a big puzzle. The continents if arranged right all fit together and are all a big continent. There are fossil bands that connect one continent to another. Maybe its just all one coincidence but there is stronger evidence to support Pangea. Scientist have drilled holes on the ground and they compare what they drill from different places and the climate from thousands of years ago is the same in all the places so therefor they must have been connected.