Compare Sea Floor Spreading With The Formation Of Mid Ocean Ridges

Explain how scientist know that earths magnetic poles have reversed many times during earth s history.

Compare sea floor spreading with the formation of mid ocean ridges.

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 plate the cocos plate the nazca plate and the antarctic plate. Seafloor spreading is a geologic process where there is a gradual addition of new oceanic crust in the ocean floor through a volcanic activity while moving the older rocks away from the mid oceanic ridge. The rate of seafloor spreading determines the morphology of the crest of the mid ocean ridge and its width in an ocean basin. Spreading rate is the rate at which an ocean basin widens due to seafloor spreading.

As the plates separate molten rock rises to the seafloor producing enormous volcanic eruptions of basalt. Mid ocean ridges are underwater mountain ranges that typically occur at the center of an area of sea floor spreading. The production of new seafloor and oceanic lithosphere results from mantle upwelling in respo. Sea floor spreading is the process where two ocean plates move apart from each other.

It typically has a depth of 2 600 meters and rises about two kilometers above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a divergent plate boundary. A mid ocean ridge is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics. Further a correlation has been found between global spreading rates and the transgression and regression of ocean waters onto the continents.

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. Most of the cooling takes place within 70 million or 80 million years by which time the ocean depth is about 5 to 5 5 km 3 1 to 3 5 miles. Yes mid ocean ridges an sea floor spreading are linked. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.

Mid ocean ridges occur along divergent plate boundaries where new ocean floor is created as the earth s tectonic plates spread apart. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate. Spreading rates determine if the ridge is fast intermediate or slow.