What drives the motion of the plates?
What drives the motion of the plates?
Research has shown that the major driving force for most plate movement is slab pull, because the plates with more of their edges being subducted are the faster-moving ones. However, ridge push is also presented in recent research to be a force that drives the movement of plates.
What is the driving mechanism for plate tectonics?
The main features of plate tectonics are: Convection currents beneath the plates move the crustal plates in different directions. The source of heat driving the convection currents is radioactivity deep in the Earths mantle.
What forces cause plate tectonics move?
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.
What is the driving force of plate tectonics quizlet?
The driving force behind plate tectonics is convection in the mantle. Hot material near the Earth’s core rises, and colder mantle rock sinks.
What are the 3 causes of plate movement?
The force that causes most of the plate movement is thermal convection, where heat from the Earth’s interior causes currents of hot rising magma and cooler sinking magma to flow, moving the plates of the crust along with them. In ridge push and slab pull, gravity is acting on the plate to cause the movement.
What is it called when two plates move apart?
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 plates move sideways in relation to each other.
What are the 4 types of evidence for continental drift?
They based their idea of continental drift on several lines of evidence: fit of the continents, paleoclimate indicators, truncated geologic features, and fossils.
How fast do tectonic plates move?
They can move at rates of up to four inches (10 centimeters) per year, but most move much slower than that. Different parts of a plate move at different speeds. The plates move in different directions, colliding, moving away from, and sliding past one another. Most plates are made of both oceanic and continental crust.
What are the 3 driving forces of plate tectonics?
The forces that drive Plate Tectonics include:
- Convection in the Mantle (heat driven)
- Ridge push (gravitational force at the spreading ridges)
- Slab pull (gravitational force in subduction zones)
What happens when two oceanic plates collide?
A subduction zone is also generated when two oceanic plates collide — the older plate is forced under the younger one — and it leads to the formation of chains of volcanic islands known as island arcs. Earthquakes generated in a subduction zone can also give rise to tsunamis.
What are the 4 types of plate tectonics?
What are the major plate tectonic boundaries?
- Divergent: extensional; the plates move apart. Spreading ridges, basin-range.
- Convergent: compressional; plates move toward each other. Includes: Subduction zones and mountain building.
- Transform: shearing; plates slide past each other. Strike-slip motion.
What happens when two plates move apart?
A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. Magma rises into and through the other plate, solidifying into granite, the rock that makes up the continents. Thus, at convergent boundaries, continental crust is created and oceanic crust is destroyed.
What makes the force that holds atoms together?
The electrical charge that is exhibited from protons and electrons attracting to each other causes the force of the atoms to become stronger. The charge sets up the framework for the electrical force that is used to hold everything together, but it is not strong enough to keep the atoms close enough together.
Why are charged particles in an atom held together?
And keep in mind, the electric force gets stronger as charged particles get closer together, and the protons in a nucleus are veryclose together. As a result, the force that holds protons and neutrons together must be verystrong. Well, in a brilliant stroke of imagination, physicists have named this force “the strong force.”
How are atoms held together in a lattice?
Individual atoms held together by dispersion forces. Cations and Anions arranged in a regular lattice held together by ion-ion attraction. Individual molecules held together by various combinations of intermolecular forces. Atoms held together by covalent bonds. A measure of the force exerted by a gas above a liquid.
How are electrons held together in the nucleus?
As Chris described so briefly, electrons are held to the nucleus (but not too close) by the EM force (sometimes referred to as the EM interaction). Nucleons are held together in the nucleus by the nuclear forces; the strong force is the most important, but the weak force is involved too.
