Sea Floor Spreading And Mid Ocean Ridge Simulation

The patterns reflect the creation and spreading of oceanic crust along the mid oceanic ridges.

Sea floor spreading and mid ocean ridge simulation.

The formation of the new crust is due to the rising of the molten material magma from the mantle by convection current. Fill in the blanks based on your seafloor spreading model. Describe how sound waves are used to develop a map of the features of the seafloor. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

The seafloor moves and carries continents with it. Seafloor spreading simulation part i. The mid atlantic ridge and east pacific rise are examples of midocean ridges. The mid ocean ridge is the region where new oceanic crust is created.

Seafloor spreading processes create new oceanic crust at mid ocean ridges and destroy older crust at deep sea trenches. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones known collectively as the mid ocean ridge system and spreads out laterally away from them. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate the east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate pull rather than magma pressure although there is typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges.

Label these two lines with their age. The process of sea floor spreading. Seafloor spreading takes place at midocean ridges and produces basalt the rock that makes up the oceanic crust. They are the shallowest major features of the seafloor.

1 let s assume the oldest oceanic crust formed when pangaea started to split apart. Midocean ridges reach a typical summit elevation of 2 700 meters below sealevel. These surveys revealed a series of invisible magnetic stripes of normal and reversed polarity in the sea floor like that shown in the figure below. Magnetic polarity stripes give clues to seafloor ages and the importance of mid ocean ridges in the creation of oceanic crust.

Basalt forming at the ridge crest picks up the existing magnetic polarity. 200 million years old estimate the ages of at least 3 other pairs of lines and label them as well on your paper model. This idea played a pivotal role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics which revolutionized geologic thought during the last quarter of the 20th century. The oceanic crust is composed of rocks that move away from the ridge as new crust is being formed.