Plate Tectonics

This week we have been investigating how Nepal was created. We've found out that:

• The surface of the world is broken into large chunks called 'plates'
• These plate slowly drift around ontop of the liquid mantle that is below the surface of the earth
• Sometimes these plates collide, and can force land up or down, making either mountains or deep trenches

We saw on 'Google Earth'  the  plate boundary that runs through New Zealand. We could see the deep ocean trenches and big mountain ranges, where two plates were pushing against each other.

We then looked at Nepal and saw the great Himalayan Mountains. We watched an animation that showed how, over time, the Indian plate collided with the Asian plate, forcing land that was once the ocean floor, many kilometres up into the air. Wow!

We broke into small groups and made our own tectonic plates out of plaster-cine, and made a small stop-frame animation of our plates colliding.

As soon as we finish our animations we will post them on the 'Class of 2010' Student blog. Head over there to have a look (link on the right hand side)