Major tectonic plates

The Hawaiian-Emperor Chain is an example of a hotspot track – a trail of volcanic islands and seamounts created on a lithospheric plate as the plate slowly shifts over a spot of localized melting sourced by a jet of hot material rising from the deep mantle (mantle plume).

Tectonic plates have created some of the most astonishing geologic creations on earth. Read more about the History, Theory, and Definition...

IRIS is a consortium of universities dedicated to the operation of science facilities for the acquisition, management, and distribution of seismological data.

subduction zone - a narrow, elongate region in which one lithospheric plate descends relative to another.

Asthenosphere: The soft upper mantle layer under lithospheric plates.

​Watch the above YouTube about our earth and try to give me 5 pieces of information about the structure of our planet and the processes that go on inside it.

Plate tectonics is the theory that explains the structure of the Earth’s crust and associated movements and phenomena that result from the interaction of the stiff rigid lithospheric plates w…

Students learn about the structure of the earth and how an earthquake happens. In one activity, students make a model of the earth including all of its layers. In a teacher-led demonstration, students learn about continental drift. In another activity, students create models demonstrating the different types of faults.