plate tectonics vocabulry- part one
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Created by:
crashley04 on October 22, 2008
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13 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 inner core | a solid sphere of metal, mainly nickel and iron, at earth's canter |
| outer core | a layer of molten metal, mainly nickel and iron, which surrounds earth's inner core |
| mantle | the layer of rock between earth's outer core and crust, in which most rock is hot enough tp flow in convection currents; earth's thickest layer |
| crust | a thin outer layer of rock above a planet's mantle, including all dry land and ocean basins |
| lithosphere | the layer of earth made up of the crust and the rigid rock of the upper mantle,averaging about 40 kilometers thick and broken into tectonic plates |
| asthenosphere | the layer in earths upper mantle and directly under the lithosphere in which rock is soft and weak because it is close to melting |
| tectonic plate | one of the large, moving pieces into which earth's lithosphere is broken and which commonly carries both oceanic and continental crust |
| continental drift | the hypothesis that earth's continents move on earth's surface |
| pangaea | a hypothetical supercontinent that include all of the landmass on earth |
| mid-ocean ridge | a long line of sea-floor mountains where new ocean crust is formed by volcanic activity along a divergent boundary |
| convection | the transfer of energy from place to place by the motion of heated gas or liquid; in earths's mantle, convection is thought to transfer energy by motion of solid rock, which when under great heat and pressure can move like a liquid |
| convection current | a circulation pattern in which material is heated and rises in one area, then cools and sinks in another area, flowing in a continuous loop |
| theory of plate tectonics | a theory stating that earths lithosphere is broken into huge plates that move and change in size over time |
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