Plate Movement

As we saw in a previous post ‘Layered Earth‘ the Earth has distinctive layers.  The activities of the lower layers directly affects the layers above.

For example, heat from the core causes convection currents in the mantle. These currents slowly move the crust around. In some places the crust is destroyed. In other places new crust is formed.

Convection occurs when particles with a lot of heat energy in a liquid or gas move and take the place of particles with less heat energy.

The Earth’s crust is broken into distinctive parts. These are called tectonic plates. They roughly define the boundaries of the various continents.

The plates are like giant rafts that slowly move around. Their movement is driven by convection current in the mantle. The mantle is much hotter than the crust and its rock is molten. At the boundaries between plates, molten magma is able to force its way to the surface and escape as lava.

Earthquakes and volcanoes are primarily found at plate boundaries.