Plate Tectonics

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the boundary of two plates and where the convection current is moving upwards like this. The plates move apart and the new magma, which is molten rock erupts to fill the gap forming new oceanic crust made of basalt, an igneous rock and this is called: the divergent boundary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Europe and America were joined and there was no Atlantic Ocean. These convection currents pulled the two continents apart.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even today the Atlantic Ocean is spreading about as fastest as your fingernails grow and down the middle, our underwater volcanoes, were strange life forms grow among the so called: black smokers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the ocean is spreading in some places it must being consumed in others and this is where two plates are moving towards each other, the so called: convergent boundaries.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes, the plate simply slide alongside each other as they do in the famous San Andreas Fault in California. The relative movements, in the so called: transform boundary, cased major earthquakes. This would also mean the Los Angeles will come alongside San Francisco in about 20 million years time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the plate moves over the hot spot, a series of islands form as we see in Hawaii. Gradually, the older islands get eroded and disappear beneath the ocean.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------