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What is a Plate? The surface of the Earth is broken up into large plates. It’s easy to confuse these plates with the Earth’s crust – the thin outermost layer of the Earth. But there is more to the structure of the Earth than this simple image of a ‘cracked egg-shell’.
Plate tectonics, theory dealing with the dynamics of Earth’s outer shell that revolutionized Earth sciences by providing a uniform context for understanding mountain-building processes, volcanoes, and earthquakes as well as the evolution of Earth’s surface and reconstructing its past continents and oceans.
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') [1] is the scientific theory that Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago.
In plate tectonics, Earth’s outermost layer, or lithosphere —made up of the crust and upper mantle—is broken into large rocky plates. These plates lie on top of a partially molten layer of rock called the asthenosphere.
There are two types of plates, oceanic and continental. An example of an oceanic plate is the Pacific Plate, which extends from the East Pacific Rise to the deep-sea trenches bordering the western part of the Pacific basin. A continental plate is exemplified by…
Plate tectonics is a theory about how Earth's lithosphere is divided into a series of rigid plates; and, how movements of these plates produce earthquakes, volcanoes, ocean trenches, mountain ranges, and more.
What is a tectonic plate? A tectonic plate (also called lithospheric plate) is a massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere. Plate size can vary greatly, from a few hundred to thousands of kilometers across; the Pacific and Antarctic Plates are among the largest.
Tectonic plates are large, irregular-shaped slabs of rock making up the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. They are found to float on top of a semi-liquid layer of rock called the asthenosphere. Plate tectonic theory began in 1915 when Alfred Wegener proposed his theory of continental drift.
There are many different types of plate boundaries. For example, sections of Earth’s crust can come together and collide (a “convergent” plate boundary), spread apart (a “divergent” plate boundary), or slide past one another (a “transform” plate boundary).
Plate tectonics has revolutionized the way we view large features on the surface of the Earth. Earth’s internal processes were previously thought to operate in a vertical fashion, with continents, oceans, and mountain ranges bobbing up and down, without much sideways movement.