Plate Tectonics - Middle School

If you're confused about plate tectonics, don't stress — just review this core vocabulary. Learn about continental drift, the geological structure of the Earth, faults, earthquakes, and more.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. Alfred Lothar Wegener
    German geophysicist who proposed the theory of continental drift (1880-1930)
  2. asthenosphere
    the zone of Earth's mantle that lies below the lithosphere
  3. compression
    an increase in the density of something
  4. conduction
    the transmission of heat or electricity or sound
  5. continent
    one of the large landmasses of the earth
  6. continental drift
    the gradual movement of very large land masses
  7. continental shelf
    the relatively shallow seabed surrounding a continent
  8. convection
    transfer of heat caused by molecular motion in liquid or gas
  9. core
    the central part of the Earth
  10. crust
    the outer layer of the Earth
  11. crustal movement
    movement resulting from or causing deformation of the earth's crust
  12. deform
    alter the shape of (something) by stress
  13. density
    the amount per unit size
  14. earthquake
    vibration from underground movement along a fault plane
  15. fault
    a crack in the earth's crust resulting from displacement
  16. folding
    a geological process that causes a bend in a stratum of rock
  17. fracture
    a crack in the earth's crust
  18. Gondwanaland
    a hypothetical continent that (according to plate tectonic theory) broke up later into India and Australia and Africa and South America and Antarctica
  19. Laurasia
    a hypothetical continent that (according to plate tectonic theory) broke up later into North America and Europe and Asia
  20. lithosphere
    the solid part of the Earth
  21. magma
    molten rock in the earth's crust
  22. mantle
    the layer of the earth between the crust and the core
  23. mesosphere
    the atmospheric layer between the stratosphere and the thermosphere
  24. mountain range
    a series of hills or mountains
  25. normal fault
    an inclined fault in which the hanging wall appears to have slipped downward relative to the footwall
  26. ocean floor
    the bottom of a sea or ocean
  27. Pangaea
    (plate tectonics) a hypothetical continent including all the landmass of the earth prior to the Triassic period when it split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland
  28. plate
    a rigid layer of the Earth's crust
  29. plate tectonics
    the movement or study of the movement of Earth's crust
  30. pressure
    the act of putting pressure on something
  31. reverse fault
    a geological fault in which the upper side appears to have been pushed upward by compression
  32. Richter scale
    a system once used to measure the strength of an earthquake
  33. rift valley
    a valley with steep sides
  34. sedimentation
    the accumulation of matter deposited by some natural process
  35. seismograph
    an instrument for measuring movements of the ground
  36. stress
    (physics) force that produces strain on a physical body
  37. strike-slip fault
    a geological fault in which one of the adjacent surfaces appears to have moved horizontally
  38. subduction
    movement of the edge of one tectonic plate under another
  39. subsidence
    a gradual sinking to a lower level
  40. tension
    a stress that produces an elongation of a physical body
  41. thermal
    relating to or associated with heat
  42. trench
    a long steep-sided depression in the ocean floor
  43. uplift
    lift up from the earth, as by geologic forces
Created on Fri Feb 17 15:37:55 EST 2017 (updated Mon Apr 03 16:42:05 EDT 2017)

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