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What is Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics is the theory 

that Earth's outer shell is 

divided into several plates that 

glide over the mantle, the rocky 

inner layer above the core. The 

plates act like a hard and rigid 

shell compared to Earth's 

Mantle.   This strong outer layer 

is called the lithosphere.

Developed from the 1950s 

through the 1970s, plate 

tectonics is the modern version 

of continental drift, a theory 

first proposed by scientist 

Alfred Wegener in 1912. 

Wegener didn't have an 

explanation for how continents 

could move around the planet, 

but researchers do now

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's 

continents relative to each other, thus appearing to 

"drift" across the ocean bed.[2] The speculation that 

continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by 

Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was 

independently and more fully developed by Alfred 

Wegener in 1912, but his theory was rejected by some 

for lack of a mechanism (though this was supplied later 

by Holmes) and others because of prior theoretical 

commitments. The idea of continental drift has been 

subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which 

explains how the continents move

There are three types of boundaries in the Earth

Divergent

Convergent

Transform Fault

Divergent Boundaries

A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away 

from each other. Along these boundaries, lava spews from long 

fissures and geysers spurt superheated water. Frequent 

earthquakes strike along the rift. Beneath the rift, magma—molten 

rock—rises from the mantle. It oozes up into the gap and hardens 

into solid rock, forming new crust on the torn edges of the plates. 

Magma from the mantle solidifies into basalt, a dark, dense rock that 

underlies the ocean floor. Thus at divergent boundaries, oceanic 

crust, made of basalt, is created

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