Question

What are the possible causes of plate movements?

Answer 1

The force that causes most of the plate movement is thermal convection, where heat from the Earth's interior causes currents of hot rising magma and cooler sinking magma to flow, moving the plates of the crust along with them.

Answer 2

Answer:

There are three main causes of plate movements.

Explanation:

• A tectonic plate is made up of oceanic crust and continental lithosphere. It is a large slab of solid rock with irregularity in shape. It's size ranges from few hundred kilometres to thousand kilometres.

• One of the causes of plate movement is mantle convection currents. These are warm currents and it can carry and drive the tectonic plates in a way that resembles conveyor belt.

• Second reason is the ridge push. It occurs at the resilient upwelling mantle at ridges placed on the mid-ocean level. New formed plates near the oceanic ridges are warm and so their elevation is higher than those colder and denser plates which are far from ridges. Gravity here causes these higher plates to push away lithosphere that is placed in farther away parts of ridge.

• Third reason is the slab pull. Old plates sink as it becomes cold and dense compared to the mantle beneath them. So, when they sink, warmer parts of plate is pulled which causes the movement.

Gravity is the main reason why all these forces are able to cause the plate movement.