Drifting Plates

Earth’s outer shell is cracked into big pieces called plates. These plates move very slowly, only a few centimetres each year, on top of hot, soft rock.

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Age 9: open this week

In the picture

A colored shell piece: one of Earth’s large broken plates.
The orange-yellow layer: hot, moving rock beneath the plates.
A thin arrow on a plate: the slow direction that piece drifts.

Examples

A snail creeping across a leaf.
A fingernail growing over several weeks.

Key takeaways

Earth’s shell is broken into large plates.
The plates drift a few centimetres a year over hot rock.

Carry on in the app

Three questions on this lesson. It has left the free week, so its quiz is for subscribers.

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