Smart Science people only and fast!?

Question

1.How might convection currents account for the movement of the continents?

2. How does plate tectonics explain the formation of mountains?

Answer 1

The tectonic plates essentially float on magma in the mantle. Convection currents occur within the mantle. As magma heats up close to the core, it becomes less dense and begins to rise. Cooler magma closer to the surface becomes more dense as it cools and begins to sink. The heating is not even so as magma rises from one area and sinks in another and a more or less circular movement occurs. This is a convection current. The tectonic plates float on the moving magma and are pushed around.

Where there are plate boundaries, they collide, pull apart, and or grind against each other. Or all three, just in different places. The western edge of southern California is moving north while the rest of the US is moving west. Thus the San Andres and many other fault zones are there.

As for mountain building, when two plates collide, everything gets pushed up and rippled, like pushing on two ends of a throw rug. The Appalachian Mountains fromed when the African plate collided with the North American plate. Go the other way and rip the rug in half and you get a deep trench.

Nice copy and paste Jon – now do you really understand what you have presented?

Plate tectonics is very complex. I have tried to simplify it for you. But remember, these processes, although they are still going on right now, took literally millions of years to produce what you see now. The plates have not stopped moving.

Answer 2

Mountain Ranges
While new ocean crust is constantly being created at mid-ocean ridges, old crust must either be destroyed or reduced at the same rate (or else the planet would be continually expanding and increasing in volume). The plates, therefore, emerging along mid-ocean ridges, sliding over the athenosphere, and grinding past other plates along transform faults, are almost all headed on a collision course. When two continents carried on converging plates ram into each other, they crumple and fold under the enormous pressure, creating great mountain ranges.

Are you being sarcastic Tom?

Answer 3

Well, do you know what convection is? Once you know what it is and how it works you will be able to see how it moves the lithospheric plates.

Look up convergent boundary.