What does continental drift mean in geography?

Continental drift is the slow motion, uneven movement of the earth’s crust that builds mountains and valleys, shapes coastlines, and creates rift valleys that form the globe’s oceans. Continents collide, collide, collide! As continents collide, oceanic crust is created, mountain ranges are formed, and volcanoes erupt. Over millions of years, the continents continue to collide and form the earth’s present-day continents.

What does continental drift mean in science?

Geologists use the term “plate tectonics to describe the process of the earth’s crust and upper mantle slowly, yet constantly, grinding and bumping into each other. In a nutshell, plates of the earth’s crust move about on the earth’s surface, sliding around on the molten rock beneath them. As these plates collide with each other, they form mountains and valleys, volcanoes and earthquakes.

What does continental drift mean in terms of plate movement?

Since plates are formed from the earth’s molten mantle, they experience interactions with neighbouring plates. These plate interactions can cause one part of a plate to rise while the other sinks. This movement can be uniform or chaotic, and some plates grind against each other while others slide past each other. The result is that the earth’s crust, which is made up of the upper portion of the mantle, shifts slowly over millions of years as a result of these processes. This is known as plate

What does continental drift mean in school?

Continental drift is often taught in high school earth science classes, as it is one of the easiest ways to demonstrate the incredible power of plate tectonics. Although it is commonly defined as the slow, gradual movement of the earth’s crust, it is much more than that. There have been a number of proposals as to how it might have happened and still others that suggest it is impossible.

What is continental drift?

As you may have guessed, continental drift refers to the slow but continuous motion of the continents on the earth’s surface. It happened quite slowly because the earth is made up of a lot of different plates, and these plates move independently of each other. The movement of the plates is generally towards a single point called the “middle of the earth’s mantle”, which is located in the earth’s core. This makes continental drift a very slow process; it takes