How doo convection currents affect earths plates?
Think about the Earth’s convection currents like those in a pot of boiling water… The hot material rises up in the center of the pot, then cools at the surface and is pushed to the sides by the hotter material coming up from below… Now imagine if you put a piece of paper in the middle of the pot — it would be pushed to the side by the convection current. This is a lot like what’s going on with the Earth’s plates! The plates of the crust are VERY thin compared to the mantle below – about as thin as the paper is compared to the pot of water. The difference is that the Earth’s convection currents are solid rock flowing plastically in the mantle — so it moves MUCH slower than boiling water… that’s why it takes millions of years for a continent to be pushed any significant distance. I should have mentioned that convection currents only start the plates moving – the weight of the cool end of a plate pulling down into the asthenosphere is responsible for most plate motion. Still, with
