1. Edible Plate Tectonics each student should have 3 double-stuff Oreo cookie
Special thanks to Dr. Bob Lillie of the Department of Geosciences who normally does this presentation as a guest lecture.

2. TECTONICS: From the Greek “tecton”
builder
architect
The study of large features on Earth’s surface and the processes that formed them.
Plate tectonics suggests that large features on Earth’s surface, such as continents, ocean basins, and mountain ranges, result from interactions along the edges of large plates of Earth’s outer shell.

3. Oreo Cookies and Plate Tectonics
This outer shell is called the lithosphere
from the Greek “lithos,” meaning hard rock.
The plates, composed of Earth’s crust and uppermost mantle, ride on a warmer, softer layer of the mantle, called the asthenosphere.

4. PLATE TECTONICS: Large features… and processes…
continents
ocean basins
mountain ranges
and processes…
earthquakes
volcanic eruptions
due to movement of plates of Earth’s outer shell.

5. Cracked Egg Shell!

6. Parks and Plates
©2002 Robert J. Lillie

7. In our experiment, the upper cookie will represent the lithosphere, the creamy filling the asthenosphere, and the lower cookie the lower mantle

12. Label your Oreo Cookie Diagram

13. Choose a cookie Choose a cookie. Don’t eat it…yet!
First, carefully remove the upper cookie (a “twisting” motion is required).
2. Slide the upper cookie over the creamy filling. This motion simulates the movement of a rigid________________________ plate over the softer ____________________________.
Next, break the upper cookie in half. As you do so, listen to the sound it makes. What does that breaking represent?

15. Oreo Psycho-Personality Test
Manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities.
1. The whole thing at once.
2. One bite at a time.
3. Slow and methodical nibbles examining the results of each bite afterwards.
4. In little feverous nibbles.
5. Dunked in some liquid (milk, coffee …..)
6. Twisted apart, the inside, then the cookie.
7. Twisted apart, the inside, and toss the cookie.
8. Just the cookie, not the inside.
9. I just like to lick them, not eat them.
10. I don’t have a favorite way because I don’t like Oreos.
Psychologists have discovered that the manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities. Choose which method best describes your favorite method of eating Oreos:

16. 6. Twisted apart, the inside, then the cookie.
You have a highly curious nature.
You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities.
You deny your involvement when things go wrong.
You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior.

17. Divergent Plate Boundary
Parks and Plates
©2002 Robert J. Lillie

18. DIVERGENT Plate Boundary: Seafloor Spreading

19. DIVERGENT Plate Boundary: Seafloor Spreading

20. DIVERGENT Plate Boundary: Seafloor Spreading

22. Seafloor Spreading & Plate Tectonics
New ocean basins form from volcanism
Ocean floor forms IN BETWEEN pieces that have split
SEAFLOOR SPREADING

23. Convergent Plate Boundary

24. CONVERGENT Plate Boundary

25. Coastal Mountain Range Composite Volcanoes Plate Sweats
Sediment and Basalt Scraped off Subducting Plate
Plate Sweats

27. Transform Plate Boundary
Parks and Plates
©2002 Robert J. Lillie

30. North American Plate
Pacific Plate

31. Pacific Plate North American Plate 2 inches/year x 100 years
= 17 feet!
North American Plate
Pacific Plate