Intro Quiz: How do the Earth's plates move?

Video: How do the Earth's plates move?

﻿Hi, my name is Miss Earthrowl and welcome to lesson three in the Key Stage three units of work on plate tectonics. Today we're going to be looking at how those tectonic plates, those big slabs of rock that form the Earth's crust actually move and what the driving force is behind that movement. For today's lesson, you're need a pen and a pencil. You'll also need a piece of paper or an exercise book to be writing. Try and find yourself a quiet space away from any distractions so that you can focus on your learning. So get those items, get yourself ready and press play when you're all set. Welcome back. So we need to think about this question. How do the tectonic plates move? What's the driving force behind that motion? To help us understand we need to look at the structure of the Earth. The Earth's crust is solid and is broken up into large pieces of rock called tectonic plates. These tectonic plates float on top of the semi-molten or semi-liquid mantle, the temperature increases as you move towards the centre of the Earth. This is because the Earth in a core is the Earth's hottest layer. So what happens in the mantle to make these tectonic plates move? Remember those tectonic plates are floating on top of the mantle, and it's what's going on underneath. But it's the driving force behind that movement. We get convection currents, convection currents are currents in the Earth's mantle, which rise from the Earth's core and a strong enough to move those tectonic plates. If you want to write down that definition, then please pause the video now. Great. You can also see the convection current in this diagram here, taking place in the mantel. So how do convection currents work? I'm going to show you this video and talk you through the process. I'm very excited to be able to share with you this video from the esri website is going to show us a slice through the Earth's surface, as you can see here, so that we can see what's going on to help us visualise that motion in the mantle of the convection currents. So watch and listen carefully to find out how the process works.

It happens because hearts rock rises, heated by the Earth's core. Near the surface, the rock spreads in two directions and goes sideways. It begins to lose heat. Eventually, the much cooler rock sinks back then through this spreading process, the Earth's crust is very slowly dragged apart.

If I pause this video here, it shows us a great animation of those convection currents. You can see the core down at the bottom, which is in the middle of the Earth. And you can see this is heating those pockets of molten rock above it, and they're rising towards the surface and the Earth's crust, you can then see that they're forced to stretch sideways. And as they do so they drag those plate tectonics with them. They then start to cool down and sink back down towards the core, ready to start the process again, hopefully that video insert has given you a little bit more of an idea of what's going on in the Earth's mantle to drive this tectonic plate movement. But let's walk through this process of convection currents. So the Earth's core heats up the rock in the lower mantle. You can see on the diagram below that we've got the core represented in red in the middle of the Earth and the mantle around it. As the rock in the lower mantle melts and expands as it gets heated. This pocket of heated molten liquid rock is less dense and lighter than the surrounding rocks which rises away from the core. You can see the hot, less dense liquid rock rising on this diagram represented by the arrows. As this molten rock rises, it reaches the crust and it spreads sideways. The thick viscous molten rock is very sticky, and so it sticks to the bottom of those tectonic plates and drags them along with it. You can see on the diagram the tectonic plates being dragged apart. As the molten rock is now further away from the heat source, and it's been there for a little while it's starting to cool down again, and become denser or heavier. This means that as it's cooler and heavier, it sinks back down towards the core, completing that convection cell. Again, you can see the arrows represented on the diagram. When those pockets of molten rock are red hot, you can see that you've got red arrows where they're rising away from the core, and then moving sideways. But they start to cool down. And when it's cooler, those arrows are represented in orange until it gets back down to the core, and the whole process starts again. So let's have a think about what you've remembered. I want you to read through these statements, and put the following statements in the correct order to explain the process of convection currents in the mantle to help you out the first and the last are correct and highlighted in pink. I want you to pause the video to complete your task. Excellent well done for having a go. Let's see if you've managed to get the order of the process correct. So we know that the two pink statements are right. The core heats up the rock the lower mantle is the starting point. The next point is C the rock in the lower mantle melts and expands as it gets heated. Well done and give yourself a tip if you managed to put that next. Then we have B the pockets of heated molten liquid rock a less dense or lighter than the surrounding rock, so they rise away from the heat of the core. As the molten rock rises, it reaches the crust and spread sideways as the thick viscous molten rock sticks to the bottom the plate, it drags it along with it. Then we have D as the molten rock is further away from the heat of the core, it cools and becomes denser, heavier. And then we know that F was the final piece. As it becomes heavier, it sinks back down towards the core ready to be heated again. If you want to, you can pause the video to make sure that you've got these statements written in the correct order. Give yourself a tick if you've managed to get it right and well done. Now, it's not just the convection currents that are thought to move the earth tectonic plates. They're very important part of the process, but we also have slab pull and ridge push. Let's watch this video to see if we can work out what ridge push and slab pull are. If we watch a little bit more of this video, we can see not only the important role the convection currents have on tectonic plate movement, but also those other two key terms ridge push and slab pull.

It happens because hot rock rises, heated by the earth's core near the sun.

But pause the video here, we can start to think about what ridge push is. You can see that as the magma rises, it pushes up through the cracks in the earth surface and comes out in a line of volcanoes and solidifies to form what we call a ridge as this pushes up and as it solidifies, it actually has another process and it pushes those plates apart, contributing to their movement, and that's what we call ridge push.

Surface the rock spreads in two directions and goes sideways. It begins to lose heat. Eventually.

If I pause the video again, we can talk about the other process. Yes, we have convection currents, dragging those plates apart because of that hot, sticky, viscous thick magma. But also, the plate being dragged apart is what we call oceanic crust. An oceanic crust is known to be denser and heavier than the other crust continental crust. As it starts to plunge down into the mantle, as we can see here, it's not only being dragged down by the convection current, but it's also being pulled down because of gravity, because it's much heavier and denser. Therefore gravity acts on it to pull it down more into the mantle, fueling and driving that process of the movement of tectonic plates. So hopefully you can now understand that there are three different processes taking place that cause that movement of the tectonic plates. We've got our convection currents in the mantle. We've then got ridge push, which is where as the magma comes up towards the crust, it starts to form a ridge which pushes those plates apart. And the third one is slab pull. Slab pull is where you've got a really heavy, dense oceanic crust. And because it's weightier or heavier than the other crust, and the mantle it as it sinks back down, it kind of forces its way plunging into the mantle because of the weight. So let's see what you've learned. I'd like you to draw an annotated diagram to show ridge push and slab pull. I want you to draw both features clearly and annotate the diagram to explain the process of ridge push and slab pull. Now, when you annotate something, it means that you're providing much more detail than a simple label. You're almost writing full sentences to explain the process. To help you out, I put some words at the bottom, I want you to use the words below to help you explain how each of those processes work. Now remember, you're writing these in full sentences. I've also put some numbers onto the diagram to help you. But each of these numbers, I expect you to write full sentence to explain that particular part of the process. One, two, and three refer to ridge push, whereas four refers to slab pull. So pause the video now to complete your task. And don't forget to press resume when you're done. Welcome back. So let's see did you get it? I put the diagram here, where we can see the oceanic crust and the continental crust. I've also labelled the mantle and put an arrow on just show the direction that the force of gravity is working in. This will help you to explain. So let's see what's goes at number one, we have rising magma. Now you can give yourself a tick if you've written rising magma here, but you can give yourself an extra tick if you've added in some full sentence information about why that magma is rising. Number two, lava erupts and solidifies as a ridge. That's the second part of the ridge push process. Give yourself a tick if you've managed to write that or similar down and thirdly, the plates are pushed apart. This is because it's the lather solidifies it actually acts on pushing that and fueling the process of the movement of the tectonic plates. We then move on to slab pull. Oh, sorry, to label that that's ridge push the process that pushes the plate apart. Second process gravity pulls the dense oceanic plate downwards. You can give yourself a tick, if you've got this right. You might even have added some extra information. If you have give yourself an extra tick. You can also give yourself a tick for labelling this process as slab pull. So we have those three main processes that help us explain how the Earth's tectonic plates move. We have the convection currents in the mantle fueled by the heat of the core, causing the magma to become heated, less dense and rise towards the crust and then get spread apart and as it does so it pulls those tectonic plates with it. Secondly, we have ridge push, which as that rising magma comes towards the crust, it forms a ridge pushing those plates further apart. And finally, we have slab pull because the oceanic crust is dense and heavy gravity acts on it as it starts to go into the mantle further pulling it down to become subducted in the mantle, well done for all of the effort that you've put into today's lesson. In next lesson, we'll be looking at the different types of paint boundary and I hope to see you then. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter tagging @Planetearthrowl, @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Exit Quiz: How do the Earth's plates move?

Completed: How do the Earth's plates move?

This lesson will look at how the Earth's plates move by convection currents, slab pull and ridge push.

Geography

How do the Earth's plates move?

Introductory Quiz

Video

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete