1. Plate Boundaries Lab

2. Warm up Dec. 10th I will learn the type of plate boundaries
Homework: 6 weeks test Thursday…
Semester exams next week schedule on board
What are the types of plate boundaries?
What happens at the plate boundaries

3. Background Information
The Mystery of Plate Tectonics

4. Layers of the Earth
If you imagine the earth like an apple, there are three main parts. There is the core, the mantle (the “white” part of the apple), and the crust (the skin of the apple).

5. Earth Layers
Earth’s rigid outer shell, the lithosphere, is made up of the crust and the top part of the mantle. The asthenosphere is the plastic-like layer below the lithosphere.

6. Plate Tectonics
According to the plate tectonic model, the lithosphere is broken into vast slabs called plates.

7. Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is the idea that the Earth’s outer shell consists of individual plates, which interact in various ways and thereby produce earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, and the crust itself.

8. Convection Current.
These plates are slowly and continually moving. This movement is caused by hot material moving up from deep within the Earth unevenly and spreading over the asthenosphere, setting the plates in motion. This is called a convection current.

9. Plates moving
When plates move, they can interact in several ways. Because each plate moves as a distinct unit, all interaction among individual plates occurs along their boundaries.

10. Divergent Plate Boundaries
Complete Part One
Divergent Plate Boundaries

11. Divergent boundaries
Divergent boundaries are where plates move apart, leaving a gap between them. The gap then fills with the asthenosphere from below, and cools, forming new crust.

12. Seafloor Spreading
Seafloor spreading is the movement of two oceanic plates away from each other (at a divergent plate boundary), which results in the formation of new oceanic crust (from magma that comes from within the Earth's mantle) along a a mid-ocean ridge. Where the oceanic plates are moving away from each other is called a zone of divergence. Ocean floor spreading was first suggested by Harry Hess and Robert Dietz in the 1960's.

14. Part 1 Divergent Plate Boundaries
1. What happens to the frosting between the graham crackers, how does it look?
2. What do each of the graham crackers represent?
3. What does the frosting represent?
4. Draw and label a divergent plate. Predict what would be happening at a divergent boundary.

15. Convergent plate boundaries Continental and Oceanic
Complete Part Two
Convergent plate boundaries
Continental and Oceanic

16. Convergent boundaries
Convergent boundaries are where plates move together, forcing one of the slabs of lithosphere to descend beneath the other or both get pushed up.

17. Oceanic Plate and Continental Plate
Oceanic Plate and Continental Plate - When a thin, dense oceanic plate collides with a relatively light, thick continental plate, the oceanic plate is forced under the continental plate; this phenomenon is called subduction

18. Oceanic Plate and Continental Plate

21. Part 2 Convergent Plate Boundaries (continental and ocean)
1. What type of plate does the Styrofoam represent?
2. What type of plate does the graham cracker represent?
3. What happens when a piece of crust goes under another piece of crust (called subduction)?
4. Draw and label a convergent plate (continental and ocean)

22. Convergent plate boundaries Continental and Continental
Complete Part Three
Convergent plate boundaries
Continental and Continental

23. Convergent plate boundaries Continental and Continental
Two Continental Plates - When two continental plates collide, mountain ranges are created as the colliding crust is compressed and pushed upwards.

24. Convergent plate boundaries Continental and Continental

27. Part 3 Convergent Plate Boundaries
1. What does the graham cracker represent?
2. In what way are the wet graham crackers more like the real crustal plates than are the dry graham crackers?
3. What feature is represented where curling and folding occurred at the ends of the wet graham cracker?
4. Draw and label a convergent plate boundary ( two continental plates). What type of land feature would you predict to be in this area?

28. Transform Plate Boundaries
Complete Part Four
Transform Plate Boundaries

29. Transform boundaries
Transform boundaries are where plates grind past each other, scraping and deforming as they pass.

30. Transform Plate Boundary
When two plates move sideways against each other there is a tremendous amount of friction which makes the movement jerky. The plates slip, then stick as the friction and pressure build up to incredible levels. When the pressure is released suddenly, and the plates suddenly jerk apart, this is an earthquake.

31. Transform Plate Boundary

32. Earthquake
An earthquake is the vibrations produced by the breaking of rock.

33. Most Recent Earthquakes

34. Cleburne Earthquakes????

35. Faults
The location where the plates break or move is called a fault. Faults interrupt rock layers by moving them out of place.

36. Faults
There are three kinds of faults. One kind pushes the rocks together, one pushes them apart, and in one, the rocks slide past each other.

38. Normal fault
In a normal fault, there is a pull-apart force. In a normal fault, rock above the fault surface moves downward in relation to rock below the fault surface.

39. Reverse fault
In a, the rock gets squeezed and the rock is forced over and up.

40. Slip-strike fault,
In a slip-strike fault, rocks on either side of the fault are moving past each other without much upward or downward movement. The San Andreas fault in California is a slip-strike fault.

41. Part 4 Transform Plate Boundaries
1. Why is this movement often described as “horizontal sliding?”
2. What famous fault is associated with this type of movement?
3. As you modeled this type of fault, nothing happened at the beginning, but as the pressure increased, the graham crackers finally broke. How is this similar to the situation in California?
4. Draw and label a transform plate boundary. What type of catastrophic event might you predict to occur in this area?

43. Conclusion http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/tectonics/#

44. Conclusion What is an Earthquake?
Why do you think it is easier to predict where an earthquake will occur than it is to predict when it will occur?