Why do Oreos demonstrate plate boundaries?
At divergent plate boundaries, two plates move away from one another. The two plates are represented by the two halves of the broken Oreo biscuit. The space created by this divergent movement of plates is filled with molten magma from Earth’s asthenosphere (mantle).
What does the breaking of the upper cookie in half represent in Oreo tectonics?
The plates, composed of Earth’s crust and uppermost mantle, ride on a warmer, softer layer of the mantle, called the asthenosphere. In our experiment, the upper cookie will represent the lithosphere, the creamy filling the asthenosphere, and the lower cookie the mesosphere.
What does the upper cookie represent?
The upper cookie is the lithosphere, the creamy filling the asthenosphere, and the lower cookie the lower mantle. Carefully remove the upper cookie with a “twisting” motion. Slide the upper cookie over the creamy filling to simulate motion of a rigid lithospheric plate over the softer asthenosphere.
What type of plate boundary do the graham crackers in this model represent?
Divergent Boundary: Push the two graham crackers away from one another and watch the magma. Divergent zones occur on the ocean floor where plates spread apart. As the plates separate, magma oozes up, cools and hardens to make new crust.
Why do the plates move short answer?
The plates can be thought of like pieces of a cracked shell that rest on the hot, molten rock of Earth’s mantle and fit snugly against one another. The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other.
What is tectonic plates very short answer?
A tectonic plate (also called lithospheric plate) is a massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere. Plate size can vary greatly, from a few hundred to thousands of kilometers across; the Pacific and Antarctic Plates are among the largest.
What does the breaking of the upper cookie represent?
The plates, composed of Earth’s crust and uppermost mantle, ride on a warmer, softer layer of the mantle, called the asthenosphere. In our experiment, the upper cookie will represent the lithosphere, the creamy filling the asthenosphere, and the lower cookie the mesosphere. Label the Oreo Diagram below.
What do you call the process where one cookie plate moves underneath the other?
In some cases, however, a convergent plate boundary can result in one tectonic plate diving underneath another. This process, called “subduction,” involves an older, denser tectonic plate being forced deep into the planet underneath a younger, less-dense tectonic plate.
What does the breaking of the upper cookie and half represent?
Next, break the upper cookie in half. As you do so, listen to the sound it makes. What does that sound represent? An earthquake.
What do the graham crackers represent how about the?
The top graham cracker pieces represent the tectonic plates. The tectonic plates (tectonic means things that happen on the surface of the Earth) float around on this melted rock and move in different ways, which we just demonstrated.
What type of landform does the meeting of these two graham crackers represent?
Making Tectonic Plates On top of the mantle, we placed two graham crackers to represent the cooler, rigid crust. Where the two graham cracker plates meet is called a plate boundary and they are named by the way the plates move against each other.
How do tectonic plates work?
Plate motions cause mountains to rise where plates push together, or converge, and continents to fracture and oceans to form where plates pull apart, or diverge. The continents are embedded in the plates and drift passively with them, which over millions of years results in significant changes in Earth’s geography.
How are tectonic plates formed?
Earth’s tectonic plates may have taken as long as 1 billion years to form, researchers report today in Nature1. The plates — interlocking slabs of crust that float on Earth’s viscous upper mantle — were created by a process similar to the subduction seen today when one plate dives below another, the report says.
What are tectonic plates for kids?
Tectonic plates are broken pieces made of the Earth’s crust or lithosphere. Another name for them is crustal plates. Continental crust is less dense, and oceanic crust is denser. These rigid plates can move in different directions, shifting constantly.
Why do plates move short answer?
The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.