Diagram Of The Sea Floor Spreading

Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

Diagram of the sea floor spreading.

Enjoy the videos and music you love upload original content and share it all with friends family and the world on youtube. The process is continuous because forces cause opposite sides of the midocean ridge to constantly move apart making new room for the process to repeat. Seafloor spreading is the continuous process of forming new igneous rock at midocean ridges by injection of magma that forms new seafloor. Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones and spreads out laterally away from them.

The rate at which new oceanic lithosphere is added to each tectonic plate on either side of a mid ocean ridge is the spreading half rate and is equal to half of the spreading rate. Sea floor topography is controlled by the age of the oceanic lithosphere and the rate of spreading. This can result in an ever widening seafloor at the. The mid ocean ridge curves like the seams of a baseball along the sea floor extending into all of earth s oceans.

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. Most of the mountains in the mid ocean ridge lie hidden under hundreds of meters of. Sea floor spreading powerpoint 1. Learn vocabulary terms and more with flashcards games and other study tools.

If the spreading rate relative velocity is high magma must be rising rapidly and the lithosphere is relatively hot beneath the ridge. Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading. The red colors are the youngest parts of the seafloor where fresh new crust is formed as lava seeps up from the deep interior of the earth at spreading ridges as new crust forms at these spreading ridges older crust colored green in the diagram moves away from. In seafloor spreading.

This diagram provides evidence of seafloor spreading by showing the ages of ocean floor in the atlantic and eastern pacific oceans. Start studying sea floor spreading 3 2. Mapping the mid ocean ridge the east pacific rise is just one part of the mid ocean ridge the longest chain of mountains in the world. Thus for fast spreading centers the ridge stands at higher elevations than for slow spreading centers.

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. Magma molten rock withing the earth s mantle. Lower mantle semi rigid the deepest parts of the mantle just above the core.