Science project idea for tectonic plate boundaries

This one-pager over plate boundaries is an excellent addition to your interactive notebook! Use it to introduce a new topic or review a topic after it has been taught. The hand drawn style helps add creativity to the classroom and create visual connections to the content. This is helpful for all stu...

In this activity, the student knows that natural events can impact Earth systems. The student will relate plate tectonics to the formation of crustal features. Students will sort cards by identifying characteristics of each type of plate boundary.This resource includes:Student/Teacher InstructionsId...

IRIS is a consortium of universities dedicated to the operation of science facilities for the acquisition, management, and distribution of seismological data.

Teach students about plate tectonics and how the plates interact with one another with a Plate Boundaries Sort that is aligned with the Next Generation

Illustration about Three types of plate boundaries exist. this is Transform boundaries (Conservative). Illustration of generation, conservative, earthquakes - 40535989

A convergent boundary is a place where tectonic plates push against each other, forming mountains, trenches, and sometimes causing volcanic eruptions.

How does this resource excite and engage children's learning?Tectonic Plate Boundaries Fact SheetThis sheets is an accessible way for students to engage with the key facts of tectonic plate boundaries.What Are Tectonic Plates?A tectonic plate is a giant block of solid rock. The world's oceans and la...

Learn about tectonic plate boundary types and what is happening at convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries.

Plate Boundaries Worksheet from plate tectonic worksheet answers , image source: homeschooldressage.com

How Do Plate Boundaries Form and Die?  The configuration of plates and plate boundaries visible on our planet today has not existed for all of geologic history, and will not exist indefinitely into the future. Because of plate motion, oceanic plates form and are later consumed, while continents merge and later split apart. How does a new  divergent boundary come into existence, and how does an existing convergent boundary eventually cease to exist? Most new divergent boundaries form when a continent splits and separates into two continents. We call this process rifting. A convergent boundary ceases to exist when a piece of buoyant lithosphere, such as a continent or an island arc, moves into the subduction zone and, in effect, jams up the system. We call this process collision. Continental Rifting  During the process of rifting, lithosphere stretches. A continental rift is a linear belt in which continental  lithosphere pulls apart (figure above a). During the process, the lithosphere stretches horizontally and thins vertically, much like a piece of taffy you pull between your fingers. Nearer the surface of the continent, where the crust is cold and brittle, stretching causes rock to break and faults to develop. Blocks of rock slip down the fault surfaces, leading to the formation of a low area that gradually becomes buried by sediment. Deeper in the crust, and in the underlying lithospheric mantle, rock is warmer and softer, so stretching takes place in a plastic manner without breaking the rock. The whole region that stretches is the rift, and the process of stretching is called rifting.  As continental lithosphere thins, hot asthenosphere rises beneath the rift and starts to melt. Eruption of the molten rock produces volcanoes along the rift. If rifting continues for a long enough time, the continent breaks in two, a new midocean ridge forms, and sea-floor spreading begins. The relict of the rift evolves into a passive margin. In some cases, however, rifting stops before the continent splits in two; it becomes a low-lying trough that fills with sediment. Then, the rift remains as a permanent scar in the crust, defined by a belt of faults, volcanic rocks, and a thick layer of sediment.  A major rift, known as the Basin and Range Province, breaks up the landscape of the western United States  (figure above b). Here, movement on numerous faults tilted blocks of crust to form narrow mountain ranges, while sediment that eroded from the blocks filled the adjacent basins (the low areas between the ranges). Another active rift slices through eastern Africa; geoscientists aptly refer to it as the East African Rift (figure above c, d). To astronauts in orbit, the rift looks like a giant gash in the crust. On the ground, it consists of a deep trough bordered on both sides by high cliffs formed by faulting. Along the length of the rift, several major volcanoes smoke and fume; these include the snow-crested Mt. Kilimanjaro, towering over 6 km above the savannah. At its north end, the rift joins the Red Sea Ridge and the Gulf of Aden Ridge at a triple junction.  Collision  India was once a small, separate continent that lay far to the south of Asia. But subduction consumed the ocean between India and Asia, and India moved northward, finally slamming into the southern margin of Asia about 40 to 50 million years ago. Continental crust, unlike oceanic crust, is too buoyant to subduct. So when India collided with Asia, the attached oceanic plate broke off and sank down into the deep mantle while India pushed hard into and partly under Asia, squeezing the rocks and sediment that once lay between the two continents into the 8-km-high welt that we now know as the Himalayan Mountains. During this process, not only did the surface of the Earth rise, but the crust became thicker. The crust beneath a collisional mountain range can be up to 60 to 70 km thick, about twice the thickness of normal continental crust. The boundary between what was once two separate continents is called a suture; slivers of ocean crust may be trapped along a suture. Continental collision (not to scale). Geoscientists refer to the process during which two buoyant pieces of lithosphere converge and squeeze together as collision (figure above a,  b). Some collisions involve two continents, whereas some involve continents and an island arc. When a collision is complete, the convergent plate boundary that once existed between the two colliding pieces ceases to exist. Collisions yield some of the most spectacular mountains on the planet, such as the Himalayas and the Alps. They also yielded major mountain ranges in the past, which subsequently eroded away so that today we see only their relicts.  For example, the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States formed as a consequence of three collisions. After the last one, a collision between Africa and North America around 300 Ma, North America  became part of the Pangaea supercontinent. Credits: Stephen Marshak (Essentials of Geology)

Students will be constructing a foldable on plate boundaries. The boundaries included are divergent (continental and ocean), convergent (continental, ocean, and ocean/continental), and transform. This is a great way for students to study plate boundaries.  Students can also glue the foldable into their interactive note

This is a collage showing the sketches of differenttypes of Plate Tectonics boundaries.

Convergent and divergent plate boundaries are two fundamental processes that shape Earth's surface through the movement of tectonic plates. ...

This 24 piece set includes 3 convergent, 2 divergent, and 1 transform plate boundary in labeled and unlabeled form, blackline included. The set includes 12 PNG color illustrations, and 12 PNG blackline versions. These are high resolution (300 dpi) transparent background graphics. No watermarks wil...

Plate Boundaries Worksheet from plate tectonic worksheet answers , image source: www.slideshare.net

Divergent (Mid-Atlantic ridge, The Rift Valley), Convergent (The Andes, The Himalayas) and Transform (San Andreas fault, Dead Sea Transform). There are some…

What Do We Mean by Plate Tectonics? The paleomagnetic proof of continental drift (plate tectonics) and the discovery of sea-floor spreading set off a scientific revolution in geology in the 1960s and 1970s. Geologists realised that many of their existing interpretations of global geology, based on the premise that the positions of continents and oceans remain fixed in position through time, were simply wrong! Researchers dropped what they were doing and turned their attention to studying the broader implications of continental drift and sea-floor spreading. It became clear that these phenomena required that the outer shell of the Earth was divided into rigid plates that moved relative to each other. New studies clarified the meaning of a plate, defined the types of plate boundaries, constrained plate motions, related plate motions to earthquakes and volcanoes, showed how plate interactions can explain mountain belts and seamount chains, and outlined the history of past plate motions. From these, the modern theory of plate tectonics evolved. Below, we first describe lithosphere plates and their boundaries, and then outline the basic principles of plate tectonics theory. The Concept of a  Lithosphere Plate   Nature of the lithosphere and its behaviour. We learned earlier that geoscientists divide the outer part of the Earth into two layers. The lithosphere consists of the crust plus the top (cooler) part of the upper mantle. It behaves relatively rigidly, meaning that when a force pushes or pulls on  it, it does not flow but rather bends or breaks (figure above a). The lithosphere floats on a relatively soft, or “plastic,” layer called the asthenosphere, composed of warmer ( 1280°C) mantle that can flow slowly when acted on by a force. As a result, the asthenosphere convects, like water in a pot, though much more slowly. Continental lithosphere and oceanic lithosphere differ markedly in their thicknesses. On average, continental lithosphere has a thickness of 150 km, whereas old oceanic lithosphere has a thickness of about 100 km (figure above b). (For reasons discussed later in this chapter, new oceanic lithosphere at a mid-ocean ridge is much thinner.) Recall that the crustal part of continental lithosphere ranges from 25 to 70 km thick and consists largely of low-density felsic and intermediate rock. In contrast, the crustal part of oceanic lithosphere is only 7 to 10 km thick and consists largely of relatively high-density mafic rock (basalt and gabbro). The mantle part of both continental and oceanic lithosphere consists of very high-density ultramafic rock (peridotite). Because of these  differences, the continental lithosphere “floats” at a higher level than does the oceanic lithosphere.  The location of plate boundaries and the distribution of earthquakes. The lithosphere forms the Earth’s relatively rigid shell. But unlike the shell of a hen’s egg, the lithospheric shell contains a number of major breaks, which separate it into distinct pieces. As noted earlier, we call the pieces lithosphere plates, or simply plates. The breaks between plates are known as plate boundaries (figure above a). Geoscientists distinguish twelve major plates and several microplates.  The Basic Principles of Plate Tectonics  With the background provided above, we can restate plate tectonics theory concisely as follows. The Earth’s lithosphere is divided into plates that move relative to each other. As a plate moves, its internal area remains mostly, but not perfectly, rigid and intact. But rock along plate boundaries undergoes intense deformation (cracking, sliding, bending, stretching, and squashing) as the plate grinds or scrapes against its neighbours or pulls away from its neighbours. As plates move, so do the continents that form part of the plates. Because of plate tectonics, the map of Earth’s surface constantly changes. Identifying Plate Boundaries  How do we recognize the location of a plate boundary? The answer becomes clear from looking at a map showing the locations of earthquakes (figure above b). Recall from Chapter 1 that earthquakes are vibrations caused by shock waves that are generated where rock breaks and suddenly slips along a fault. The epicentre marks the point on the Earth’s surface directly above the earthquake. Earthquake epicentres do not speckle the globe randomly, like buckshot on a target. Rather, the majority occur in relatively narrow, distinct belts. These earthquake belts define the position of plate boundaries because the fracturing and slipping that occurs along plate boundaries generates earthquakes. Plate interiors, regions away from the plate boundaries, remain relatively earthquake-free because they do not accommodate as much movement. While earthquakes serve as the most definitive indicator of a plate boundary, other prominent geologic features also develop along plate boundaries. Note that some plates consist entirely of oceanic lithosphere, whereas some plates consist of both oceanic and continental lithosphere. Also, note that not all plates are the same size (figure above c). Some plate boundaries follow continental margins, the boundary between a continent and an ocean, but others do not. For this reason, we distinguish between active margins, which are plate boundaries, and passive margins, which are not plate boundaries. Earthquakes are common at active margins, but not at passive margins. Along passive margins, continental crust is thinner than in  continental interiors. Thick (10 to 15 km) accumulations of sediment cover this thinned crust. The surface of this sediment layer is a broad, shallow (less than 500 m deep) region called the continental shelf, home to the major fisheries of the world.  The three types of plate boundaries differ based on the nature of relative movement. Geologists define three types of plate boundaries, based simply on the relative motions of the plates on either side of the boundary (figure above a–c). A boundary at which two plates move apart from each other is a divergent boundary. A boundary at which two plates move toward each other so that one plate sinks beneath the other is a convergent boundary. And a boundary at which two plates slide sideways past each other is a transform boundary. Credits: Stephen Marshak (Essentials of Geology)