Keyword searchGuided searchClick a term to initiate a search. Scientific concepts
Type of lesson
Navigation |
Plate Tectonics Box3. Journey Through Earth - Getting ReadyGetting Ready
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 11:23.
3. Journey Through Earth - BackgroundTeacher Background
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 11:19.
3. Journey Through Earth - LogisticsTime Grouping Materials
Setting
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 11:11.
3. Journey Through EarthSummary
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 11:07.
2. Plate Patterns - SourcesSources
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:53.
2. Plate Patterns - AssessmentAssessment
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:40.
2. Plate Patterns - Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:36.
2. Plate Patterns - Getting ReadyGetting Ready
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:34.
2. Plate Patterns - BackgroundTeacher Background Yet to see all the borders you also need to look under the ocean. In the late 1950’s, the exploration of the oceans revealed enormous mid-ocean ridges that zig-zag across the ocean floor between continents, nearly encircling the globe in places. These mid-ocean ridges rise on average 4,500 kilometers above the ocean floor and reach peaks higher than most mountains on land. More recent explorations have revealed that the mid-ocean ridges are characterized by huge upwellings of magma similar to volcanoes on land. Incredibly, life, in the form of archaebacteria and other species, exists along the mid-ocean ridges, surviving on the chemicals and nutrients exiting from hydrothermal vents.
Only the Juan de Fuca, Scotia, and Arabian plates are easily overlooked. In fact, I generally don’t emphasize these 3 plates if my students don’t identify them themselves since it is not essential to me that they memorize all the world’s tectonic plates, only that they recognize how the crust is broken into moving plates and that they understand how the plate boundaries can be determined with earthquake, volcano and mid-ocean ridge information. Several critical questions remain:
All these questions are related to the differences in what is happening at each of the plate boundaries. (I choose to hold off on discussing these issues with my students until after they learn about the interior of the Earth, convection cells, and sea floor spreading.) Plate boundaries may be divided into 3 main categories: convergent boundaries where plates collide, divergent boundaries where plate pull apart, and transform boundaries where plates grind past each other. Convergent boundaries in turn have different characteristics depending on if it is 2 pieces of continental crust colliding (continent-continent convergent boundary) or if 1 piece of oceanic crust is diving down below a piece of oceanic or continental crust (subducting convergent boundary).
For ways to model these different plate boundaries with students, see the Sea Floor Spreading activity.
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:27.
2. Plate Patterns - LogisticsTime Grouping
Submitted by irene on Mon, 2006-08-07 10:21.
|