Table of Contents
When two plates come towards each other they create a convergent plate boundary. The plates can meet where both have oceanic crust or both have continental crust, or they can meet where one has oceanic and one has continental. The oceanic plate subducts into a trench, resulting in earthquakes.
What is formed when oceanic and continental plates collide?
When an ocean plate collides with another ocean plate or with a plate carrying continents, one plate will bend and slide under the other. This process is called subduction. A deep ocean trench forms at this subduction boundary.
What do continental and continental plates form?
When two continental plates converge, they smash together and create mountains. The amazing Himalaya Mountains are the result of this type of convergent plate boundary.
What do the oceanic plates form?
Oceanic plates are formed by divergent plate boundaries. These zones, located along mid-ocean ridges, represent areas where upwelling magma creates new oceanic crust. As oceanic plates subduct, they melt to form magma. This magma cools over millions of years, producing intrusive igneous rock and new continental crust.
What happens when oceanic and continental plates transform?
When oceanic or continental plates slide past each other in opposite directions, or move in the same direction but at different speeds, a transform fault boundary is formed. No new crust is created or subducted, and no volcanoes form, but earthquakes occur along the fault.
What is the difference between oceanic plate and continental plate?
Oceanic plates are much thinner than the continental plates. At the convergent boundaries the continental plates are pushed upward and gain thickness. The rocks and geological layers are much older on continental plates than in the oceanic plates. The Continental plates are much less dense than the Oceanic plates.
What happens when 2 oceanic plates collide?
As with oceanic-continental convergence, when two oceanic plates converge, one is usually subducted under the other, and in the process a trench is formed. The Marianas Trench (paralleling the Mariana Islands), for example, marks where the fast-moving Pacific Plate converges against the slower moving Philippine Plate.
What is an example of oceanic continental convergence?
Examples of ocean-continent convergent boundaries are subduction of the Nazca Plate under South America (which has created the Andes Mountains and the Peru Trench) and subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under North America (creating the Cascade Range).
What will form when two continental plates converge?
What happens when two continental plates collide? Instead, a collision between two continental plates crunches and folds the rock at the boundary, lifting it up and leading to the formation of mountains and mountain ranges.
What forms when two continental plates pull apart?
When two continental plates diverge, a valleylike rift develops. This rift is a dropped zone where the plates are pulling apart. As the crust widens and thins, valleys form in and around the area, as do volcanoes, which may become increasingly active.
What are the major oceanic plates?
There are seven major plates: African, Antarctic, Eurasian, Indo-Australian, North American, Pacific and South American. The Hawaiian Islands were created by the Pacific Plate, which is the world’s largest plate at 39,768,522 square miles.
What are 3 differences between oceanic and continental crust?
Continental crust is low in density whereas oceanic crust has a higher density. Continental crust is thicker, on the contrary, the oceanic crust is thinner. Continental crust floats on magma freely but oceanic crust floats on magma scarcely. Continental crust cannot recycle whereas oceanic crust can recycle it.
Is continental or oceanic plate thicker?
Continental crust is typically 40 km (25 miles) thick, while oceanic crust is much thinner, averaging about 6 km (4 miles) in thickness. The less-dense continental crust has greater buoyancy, causing it to float much higher in the mantle.
Do transform faults create mountains?
The broad zone of transform motion between the Pacific and North American plates formed numerous slivers of mountain ranges with narrow valleys in between. The valleys are commonly due to erosion along individual fault lines.
Can Transform boundaries cause volcanoes?
Volcanoes do not typically occur at transform boundaries. One of the reasons for this is that there is little or no magma available at the plate boundary. The most common magmas at constructive plate margins are the iron/magnesium-rich magmas that produce basalts.
What happens to transform plate boundaries?
Transform boundaries are areas where the Earth’s plates move past each other, rubbing along the edges. As the plates slide across from each other, they neither create land nor destroy it. Because of this, they are sometimes referred to as conservative boundaries or margins.
What are the 2 types of tectonic plates difference?
The two types of tectonic plates are continental and oceanic tectonic plates.
What are the main differences between the two oceanic and continental crust?
The oceanic crust is mainly made out of dark basalt rocks that are rich in minerals and substances like silicon and magnesium. By contrast, the continental crust is made up of light-colored granite rocks full of substances like oxygen and silicon.
What is the oldest tectonic plate?
Summary: Identification of the oldest preserved pieces of Earth’s crust in southern Greenland has provided evidence of active plate tectonics as early as 3.8 billion years ago, according to a report by an international team of geoscientists in Science magazine.
What happens when two oceanic plates collide quizlet?
What happens when two oceanic plates collide? When two oceanic plates collide, the denser plate is subducted and some material rises upward and forms an ISLAND. Ocean floor is pushed away from a midocean ridge to form new sea floor.
When two oceanic plates collide what determines which plate Subducts?
If the two plates that meet at a convergent plate boundary both are of oceanic crust, the older, denser plate will subduct beneath the less dense plate.
What does oceanic continental convergence form?
Ocean-Continent Convergence. When oceanic crust converges with continental crust, the denser oceanic plate plunges beneath the continental plate. Subduction of an oceanic plate beneath a continental plate causes earthquakes and forms a line of volcanoes known as a continental arc.
What are 5 landforms caused by plate movement?
Deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, island arcs, submarine mountain ranges, and fault lines are examples of features that can form along plate tectonic boundaries.
What are two kinds of crust?
Earth’s crust is divided into two types: oceanic crust and continental crust. The transition zone between these two types of crust is sometimes called the Conrad discontinuity. Silicates (mostly compounds made of silicon and oxygen) are the most abundant rocks and minerals in both oceanic and continental crust.
