Inside our Earth What keeps the Earth’s tectonic plates in motion?

Inside our Earth Lithosphere ~ The solid, ground part of our Earth; measures roughly 62 miles thick and includes the crust and the ocean floor.

Inside our Earth Asthenosphere ~ The layer just below the lithosphere and found in the upper mantle; made up of rock that is hot, soft, and slightly fluid.

Inside our Earth Convection Current ~ the path along which energy is transferred through a liquid; heat rises, cools, heats up and rises again…thought to be the driving force of continental drift in the asthenosphere.

Inside our Earth Other examples of convection currents…

A feature that rises above the surrounding landscape. In most cases, mountains are created from plate movement.

Four Basic Types: Folded Fault-Block Dome Volcano

Folded Mountains These mountains form when two tectonic plates collide (Swiss Alps, Himalayas, Urals)

Himalaya Mountains

Alberta, Canada

Sierra Nevada Range, California

Fault-Block Mountains These mountains form when masses of rock move up or down along a fault (Wasatch Range in Utah)

Wasatch Range, Utah

Franklin Mountains, Texas

Dome Mountains The surface is lifted up by magma, forming a bulge; the rock layers have worn away exposing the other layers of rock. (Pike’s Peak in Colorado, Big Horn)

Bighorn, North Dakota

Castle Dome Mountains, Arizona

Half Dome, Yosemite California

Volcano Form when magma erupts from an opening in Earth’s surface. (Mt. St. Helens - USA, Mt. Fuji - Japan)

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Fuji

Hawaii

Pompeii August 24, 79 AD, the sleeping town of Pompeii, Italy was destroyed by a volcano…Mt. Vesuvius.

Mt. Vesuvius, Italy

Pompeii

~ The city would remain buried for over 1700 years under several feet of ash, lava, and rock that fell on the city. ~ The people who lived here never knew what hit them – the rock and ash preserved their bodies in the position they last were in and it would not be until 1860 that the archaeologist, Giuseppe Fiorelli, would be able to see their story…

Pompeii