Plate Tectonics Vocabulary

A section of the lithosphere that slowly moves over the asthenosphere, carrying large slabs of continental and oceanic crust.

• Pangaea

• Plate

• Continent

• Crust

A break (crack) in Earth's crust along which rocks move.

• Boundary

• Rift

• Fault

• Canyon

Vibrations that travel through Earth carrying the energy released during an earthquake.

• Volcanic vibrations

• Tidal waves

• Seismic waves

• Plate tectonics

The name of the single landmass that began to break apart 200 million years ago.

• Antarctica

• Africa

• Pangaea

• Gondwana

• Laurasia

The movement of fluid, caused by differences in temperature, that transfers heat from one part of the fluid to another.

• Energy transfer

• Convection current

• Seismic waves

• Plate tectonics

The process by which molten material adds new oceanic crust to the ocean floor.

• Sea-floor spreading

• Rebuilding

• Convection current

• Seismic waves

An undersea mountain chain where new ocean floor is produced.

• Sea-floor spreading

• Rift valley

• Atlantis

• Mid-ocean ridge

A deep valley along the ocean floor beneath which oceanic crust slowly sinks toward the mantle.

• Subduction

• Deep-ocean trench

• Rift

• Crater

Oceanic crust sinks beneath a deep-ocean trench and back into the mantle at a convergent plate boundary.

• Folding

• Subduction

• Sea-floor spreading

• Mountain formation

A plate boundary where two plates move away from each other.

• Convergent

• Divergent

• Transform

• Normal fault