Sea Floor Spreading Centers

Spreading centers end in transform faults or in overlapping spreading center offsets.

Sea floor spreading centers.

Convection currents carry heat from the lower mantle and core to the lithosphere. Convection currents also recycle lithospheric materials back to the mantle. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones and spreads out laterally away from them. It is the mid ocean ridges.

The neovolcanic zone is at the very axis. Seafloor spreading occurs at spreading centers distributed along the crests of mid ocean ridges. When the magma reaches water at the ocean floor most spreading centers are in the ocean it cools and hardens and becomes new. Spreading centres are divided into several geologic zones.

Beginning with early evidence of continental drift such as the fit of landmasses and. The life cycle of the seafloor lesson plan by ashlee henig and stephen halpern. Where are most seafloor spreading centers located. 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.

Mantle convection is the slow churning motion of earth s mantle. 2013 12 18 19 39 33 2013 12 18 19 39 33. Seafloor spreading and other tectonic activity processes are the result of mantle convection. There is more information here than you need for this exercise.

Spreading centers occur at the boundary between two plates that are moving apart called divergent plate boundaries. Spreading center definition a linear zone in the sea floor along which magma rises and from which adjacent crustal plates are moving apart. Here the plate motion opens a gap between the plates and magma from the mantle rises up through it. Seafloor spreading takes place at the boundaries of divergent plates whereby as the divergent tectonic plates move away from each other hot convectional currents from the mantle cause the lithosphere the ocean crust to become less dense ductile and brittle and therefore rise above the surrounding crust to form a submarine mountain.

This is a schematic diagram of a spreading ridge. This is thought due to temperature gradients in the asthenosphere from mantle plumes near the spreading center. The portion that links to the two ridges is the transform fault see also the above diagram and. This 9 block day lesson plan leads students through the discovery of plate tectonics in much the same way scientists learned about it in the 1960 s.