Definition of Earth's plates
Answers
Answer:
The outer shell of the earth, the lithosphere, is broken up into tectonic plates. The seven major plates are the African plate, Antarctic plate, Eurasian plate, Indo-Australian plate, North American plate, Pacific plate and South American plate.
This drifting apart of major land masses occurred was a mystery for many years and highly debated among scientists. But when the theory of plate tectonics was introduced, much of the debating quieted down. Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's crust is broken up into plates.
It is as if the planet's surface is cracked, much like the cracks that would form on the outside of a hardboiled egg if you were to drop it. These large cracks in the earth's surface form plate-like sections of Earth's crust referred to as tectonic plates.
These plates are actually pieces of the planet's lithosphere, which is the outermost shell of the earth made up of the earth's crust and upper part of the mantle, and for this reason, tectonic plates are sometimes called 'lithospheric plates.' These plates float on top of the hotter and more fluid asthenosphere, which is the layer below the lithosphere. There are seven major tectonic plates that very slowly move around on the surface of our planet along with a number of minor plates.
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. ... The variations in plate thickness are nature's way of partly compensating for the imbalance in the weight and density of the two types of crust.