Plate Tectonics Final Flashcards
Viscous
Thick and sticky liquid
Volume
The space an object occupies
Sea floor
Bottom of an ocean
Mantle
Middle layer of the Earth
Crust
Rocky outermost layer of the Earth
Core
Extremely hot center of Earth
Discontinuities
Area between Earth’s interior layers
1/2 discontinuities
- Mohorivicic - between crust and mantle
2/2 discontinuities
Gutenberg - between mantle and core
List 4 aspects of the lithosphere
- It’s earths crust and mantle
- Forms crust-8 miles down
- Broken into giant plates
- Plates rest on some fluid part of mantle called asthenosphere
Prefix “pan” =
All
“Gaea” =
Land
“Thalas” =
Ocean
Pangea =
All land
Panthalassa =
All ocean
6 aspects of the asthenosphere
- Lies below lithosphere
- Upper part of mantle
- Begins at 75mi - 125mi
- Partially molten rock
- Asthenes’ in Greek means “weak”
- Can be pushed and formed like silly puddy
Geologists have used two main types of evidence to learn about earths interior:
- Direct evidence from rock samples
2. Indirect evidence from seismic waves
Direct evidence from rock samples
Rocks drilled from deep inside the earth allow geologists to make inferences about conditions
Indirect evidence from seismic waves
Seismic waves produced by scientists to measure the speed in which they travel giving clues to the structure of the planet
Three main layers of the earth vary greatly in size, composition, temperature, and pressure. They are:
- The crust
- The mantle
- The core
List 4 aspects of the crust
- Layer of solid rock that forms earths outer “skin”
- Includes both dry land and sea floor
- Oceanic crust consists mostly of basalt
- Continental crust, or the crust that forms the continents, consists mainly of grain
List 3 aspects of the mantle
- Layer of solid, hot rock 40 kilometers beneath earths surface
- Divided into 3 layers:
- The layers are the lithosphere , asthenosphere, and the lower mantle
Lithosphere
Upper most part of the mantle - about 100 kilometers thick
Asthenosphere
Softer part of the mantle beneath the lithosphere which is harder and under increased pressure