What are~Tectonic Plates

Our Earth is a unique mechanism. It runs on molten, liquid rocks which are underneath our feet.

Our Earth has layers. In the Center is the core which is made of solid Iron and is extremely hot. Then there's the outer core which is made of other liquid materials like iron. Then, there's the "Mantle" and that is where the hot lava is stored in our Earth. The layer that we are able to stand on is called the "Crust" which is lava that hardened enough for us to walk on.

Now, the Earth's crust isn't one giant piece, it is broken into smaller sections which are called "Tectonic Plates", and no I'm not talking about dinner plates which you can find in your kitchen cabinet.

These plates come in all shapes and sizes and because they're floating on the Mantle, they are moving and they have been since there was a crust around 3 Billion Years ago, and the plates move in many different directions, either away from each other, towards each other or across from each other.

There are 3 ways that a tectonic plate moves.

### Divergent Boundary

This boundary is where the tectonic plates are moving away from each other and this forms a ridge, one of the more notable ridges is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which separates the North American Plate and the African and Eurasian Plates respectively.

### Transform Boundary

This kind of boundary is where the plates are moving across from one another, these kind of boundaries is what also can sometimes cause Earthquakes.

The best example of a transform boundary is the San Andreas Fault (the boundary between the north American Plate and the Pacific Plate respectively) which cuts across the state of California and is the reason why California is so synonymous with Earthquakes.

One of the largest Earthquakes to have occurred on the San Andreas Fault happened on April 18, 1906 in San Francisco when an Earthquake of around 7.8 on the Richter scale hit just several miles of the city, destroying it and sparking a fire that would last for at least 4 days and killing around 3,000 people and left half of the city's population homeless.

There's also another kind of fault boundary, they're called Convergent Boundaries.

### Convergent Boundaries

This is when one tectonic plate slides underneath another. One of the biggest examples of a convergent boundary is the Cascadia Subduction Zone where the North American plate is leading the smaller Juan de Fuca Plate underneath the crust and into the mantle. Not only does this create the largest Earthquakes ever recorded but also cause Volcanic Eruptions, and sometimes the largest eruptions ever recorded.

One of the bigger volcanic eruptions in recent history was at Mt. St. Helens which erupted on may 18, 1980 and destroyed the surrounding forest as well as killing 57 people.

If you want to know more about the Mt. St. Helens disaster you can always click here.

There's a region, (or several regions) in the Pacific Ocean where is especially vulnerable to these violent Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, it's called the Ring of Fire, places like the Northwest United States, Japan, Indonesia, and Western South America get the biggest Earthquakes and sometimes Volcanic Eruptions like in Chile in 1960, Alaska in 1964, Indonesia in 2004, and in Japan in 2011. These Earthquakes also produced what is called a Tsunami (pronounced soo-na-me) large and destructive waves that pick up debris and destroy buildings as well as kill people.

That'll do it for this page. Don't forget to check out my Games and Movies wikis too. Until next time, this is JohnnyOTGS signing out.