bliss+section+5

Section 5

vocabulary
plate plate tectonics faults spreading boundry rift vally colling boundary sliding boundary

= pangea =

Major plates
Depending on how they are defined, there are usually seven or eight "major" plates:
 * [|African Plate]
 * [|Antarctic Plate]
 * [|Indo-Australian Plate], sometimes subdivided into:
 * [|Indian Plate]
 * [|Australian Plate]
 * [|Eurasian Plate]
 * [|North American Plate]
 * [|South American Plate]
 * [|Pacific Plate]

Minor plates
There are dozens of smaller plates, the seven largest of which are: []  The plates are all moving in different directions and at different speeds (from 2 cm to 10 cm per year--about the speed at which your fingernails grow) in relationship to each other. The plates are moving around like cars in a demolition derby, which means they sometimes crash together, pull apart, or sideswipe each other. The place where the two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Boundaries have different names depending on how the two plates are moving in relationship to each other. There are a few handfuls of major plates and dozens of smaller, or minor, plates. Six of the majors are named for the continents embedded within them, such as the North American, African, and Antarctic plates. Though smaller in size, the minors are no less important when it comes to shaping the Earth. The tiny Juan de Fuca plate is largely responsible for the volcanoes that dot the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
 * [|Arabian Plate]
 * [|Caribbean Plate]
 * [|Juan de Fuca Plate]
 * [|Cocos Plate]
 * [|Nazca Plate]
 * [|Philippine Sea Plate]
 * [|Scotia Plate]