I love science dont you! Today I will teach you about Plate Tectonics Plate Tectonics By: Shaked Finkelstein introduction Plate tectonics all end up causing natural disasters such as earth quakes, volcanos and more things in that family. Our continents are all apart the plates that sit above water. There are two types of plates: Oceanic Plates and Continental Plates. The biggest difference between oceanic and continental is that oceanic is a lot heavier and is underwater but continental is much lighter because it doesnt have as much water in it. Divergent When two plates pull apart and create fault lines (earthquakes) it is called Divergent boundaries. Sometimes when the plates pull apart, sea water rushes up and makes streams and rivers because of the trench that has been made. East Africa Rift Valley is one of the most famous places known to be on a divergent boundary. There are a lot of lakes and rivers that are on the Rift, scientists believe that eventually the continental crust will get too heavy and sink below sea level. Then that land mass will be gone because of the divergent boundary that lays below it. This is a diagram of a Divergent, Oceanic Plate. Convergent When two plates come nearer and nearer to each other without stopping it is called a convergent boundary. If the plates keep moving once they have touched each other for the first time the create a mountain range, that happened to Pangea! There are underwater mountain ranges where the two plates met. These two plates are called the Indian and Eurasian plates, when they collided they created the Himalaya Mountain Range. A lot of dramatic thing have happened to this specific boundary such as; intense flooding, faulting, big folded mountain ranges, small earthquake activity, thickening and shortening of plates in collision zones. This picture shows how this plate boundary works, again this one shows how mountain ranges were made! Transform plate boundaries Typical strike slips that LA gets a lot and Transform faults are confused very often. The difference between the two faults is that a typical strike slip is when there is a little offset such as when they are rubbing at each other and then suddenly slip. When you have a transform fault, two plates go together, but one is going more up, and the other more down, then they give and make an earthquake. The San Andreas fault zone is a good example of this type of boundary. The San Andreas area has a lot of reoccurring earthquakes because those two plates rub against each other all the time. whenever there is a quake there earth crust pops out. This picture is a model of this boundary. As you can see there is crust popping out as an example of what happens in these type of boundaries. Hot spots If you broke crackers in half and put them back together with not a lot of effort, there would be a small little open areas between all the crackers, the crackers represent plates so just imagine that. Hawaii was created because sometimes Magma comes up through the holes and creates volcanoes and islands. After the volcanoes explode, and the magma cools off, they create islands. These are oceanic plates, this is how they created underwater volcanoes that blew up and made the islands. There are little rocks in the magma that got very hot and exploded upwards and went up through the little uneven parts. Its pretty exciting ! The picture shows a diagram of this boundary. It shows the hot spot in oceanic form and how Hawaii was created. Fun facts Divergent boundaries are usually found underwater. Sometimes rocks get caught in between Convergent Boundaries and when the two plate hit, the rocks cause big explosions! Sometimes there is volcanic activity with Transform Boundaries in LA there is none because theres no convection current. The Hawaiian Hot Spot has been active for at least 70 million years, while the Yellowstone Hot Spot has only been active for 15 million years! Thanks for watching! I hope you enjoyed watching my presentation! Bibliography "Divergent Plate Boundaries." USGS Geology in the Parks. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Dec "Volcano World." What Is a Hot Spot? N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Dec "Earth Floor: Plate Tectonics." Earth Floor: Plate Tectonics. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Dec "Convergent Plate Boundaries." Convergent Plate Boundaries. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Dec. 2015