Plate Tectonics Vocabulary
Across
- 4. A collision between two of Earth's tectonic plates, where one plate sinks into the mantle underneath the other plate.
- 5. _______ Crust: The outermost layer of Earth’s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centers on oceanic ridges, which occur at divergent plate boundaries
- 6. The theory that explains how large pieces of the lithosphere, called plates, move and change shape
- 11. The boundary between tectonic plates that are colliding
- 12. A block of lithosphere that consists of the crust and the rigid, outermost part of the mantle
- 13. A movement or trembling of the ground that is caused by a sudden release of energy when rocks along a fault move
- 14. A break in a body of rock along which one block moves relative to another
- 16. The boundary between tectonic plates that are sliding past each other horizontally
Down
- 1. A vent or fissure in Earth’s surface through which magma and gases are expelled
- 2. The boundary between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other
- 3. The theory that the continents once formed a single landmass, broke up, and drifted.
- 7. _______ Crust: The layer of granitic, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, which form the continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores
- 8. A system for the detection of objects under water and for measuring the water's depth by emitting sound pulses and detecting or measuring their return after being reflected.
- 9. _________ Current: Any movement of matter that results from differences in density; may be vertical, circular, or cyclical
- 10. The supercontinent that formed 300 million years ago and that began to break up 200 million years ago
- 15. An area of significantly increased elevation on Earth’s surface, usually rising to a summit