Plate Tectonic Unit
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Created by:
JacquiHebner on May 23, 2012
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24 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Collisional boundary | Two plates come together and one moves |
| Convergent Boundary | Two plates come together, forces balance and neither plate moves |
| Crust | The rocky outer layer of the earth |
| Divergent Boundary | A boundary between plates that are moving away from each other |
| Earthquake | Shaking and vibration of Earth's surface |
| Lithosphere | The rigid upper layer of the Earth |
| Mantle | The layer of the Earth between the crust and the core |
| Plate | A rigid section of Earth's crust that moves very slowly |
| Plate Tectonics | The movement of plates that makes up the surface of the Earth |
| Transform Boundary | A boudnary between plates that are sliding past one another |
| Volcano | An opening in Earth's crust from which magma (molten rock), gas, and ash erupt |
| convection currents | Circular currents in the mantle caused by the magma being heated by the core off the Earth. |
| hot spots | large rising bodies of magma not at plate boundaries |
| creation of divergent boundaries | to hot spots connect at a fraction and crack, creating a line |
| mantle plume | a mass of hotter-than-normal mantle material that ascends toward the surface, where it may lead to igneous activity |
| seamount | an underwater mountain rising above the ocean floor |
| guyot | flat-topped underwater mountain |
| describe how the hawaiian islands have formed | hot spot created lava which turned into islands, and when the plate moved, without the hot spot, it created more islands |
| oceanic crust | the portion of Earth's crust that is usually below the oceans and not associated with continental areas, thinner and higher in density that continental crust and basaltic rather than granitic in composition |
| continental crust | The portion of the earth's crust that primarily contains granite, is less dense than oceanic crust, and is thicker |
| volcanic arc | a chain of volcanic islands generally located a few hundred kilometers from a trench where there is active subduction of one oceanic plate beneath another |
| island arc | A string of islands formed by the volcanoes along a deep ocean trench |
| 3 types of plate movement | divergent , convergent, and transform |
| trench | a long steep-sided depression in the ocean floor |
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