Tectonic Plates

Question 1

What is the Earth’s surface made of?

Answer 1

Plates that are constantly moving

Question 2

What is the inner core?

Answer 2

• The inner core is in the centre and is the hottest part of the Earth.
• It is solid and made up of iron and nickel with temperatures of up to 5,500°C.
• With its immense heat energy, the inner core is like the engine room of the Earth.

Question 3

What is the outer core?

Answer 3

• The outer core is the layer surrounding the inner core. - It is a liquid layer, also made up of iron and nickel.
• It is still extremely hot, with temperatures similar to the inner core.

Question 4

What is the mantle?

Answer 4

• The mantle is the widest section of the Earth.
• It has a diameter of approximately 2,900 km.
• The mantle is made up of semi-molten rock called magma.
• In the upper parts of the mantle the rock is hard, but lower down the rock is soft and beginning to melt.

Question 5

What is the crust?

Answer 5

• The crust is the outer layer of the earth.
• It is a thin layer between 0-60 km thick.
• The crust is the solid rock layer upon which we live.

Question 6

What are the two different types of crust that plates are made out of?

Answer 6

• continental crust, which carries land. It is thicker and less dense
• oceanic crust, which carries water. It is thinner, and more dense

Question 7

Why are plates moving?

Answer 7

The rock in the mantle underneath the plates is moving, which causes the plates to move.

Question 8

What are the places where plates meet called?

Answer 8

boundaries or plate margins

Question 9

What are the three different types of plate margin?

Answer 9

• destructive
• constructive
• conservative

Question 10

What are constructive margins?

Answer 10

• where two plates are moving away from each other (e.g. mid Atlantic ridge)
• magma rises from the mantle to fill the gap and cools, which creates a new crust

Question 11

What are destructive margins?

Answer 11

• where two plates are moving towards each other (e.g. east coast of Japan)
• where an oceanic plate meets a continental plate, the oceanic plate is denser and therefore is forced down into the mantle and destroyed. This often creates volcanoes and ocean trenches
• where two continental plate meet, the plates smash together but no crust is destroyed

Question 12

Which plate is heavier?

Answer 12

oceanic - it’s denser

Question 13

What is and ocean trench?

Answer 13

a very deep section of the ocean floor where the oceanic plate goes down

Question 14

What are conservative margins?

Answer 14

• can be where two plates are moving sideways past each other OR are moving beside each other in the same direction at different speeds (e.g. along the west coast of the USA)
• crust isn’t created or destroyed