Name:____________________________________________ Period: _______ Date:___________________
Discovery Education
Continents Adrift: An Introduction to Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics Video Questions
1. What evidence did Alfred Wegner give to support his theory of continental drift?
 Continent coastlines match like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
 Wegner found identical fossils on distant continents.
 Wegner found plant fossils on continents in cold arctic regions where plants would not
be able to grow. He believed the plants grew there before the continents drifted and
the continents had warmer climates.
2. What evidence did exploration of the ocean floor reveal to further support Wegener’s theory?
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A mountain range beneath the ocean called a mid-ocean ridge.
Hardened lava forms the ocean floor.
Magma heats the water allowing different organisms to survive there.
Cracks found on the ocean floor. Rock further from the crack was older = sea floor
spreading.
3. How does the movement of tectonic plates occur?
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Earth is broken up into tectonic plates.
Lithosphere = crust and solid outer portion of the mantle.
As the mantle material moves, the plates above it move.
Material in the mantle moves; circulates from the heat.
o Example: Rice in water boiling – moves in a circle (convection)
4. What are the three types of tectonic plate movement? What changes in the surface of the
earth might each of these cause?
a.) Divergent boundary – plates move apart (mid-ocean ridge). Plate material is created.
b.) Convergent boundary – plates move toward each other. Plate material is destroyed.
i.
Subduction- when one plate dives beneath another and plate material is
destroyed.
c.) Transform boundary – plates slide past each other. Earthquakes can form.
5. What are the differences between the volcanoes that formed the Hawaiian Islands and those
bordering the Pacific plate in the Ring of Fire?
 Hawaiian Islands formed over a hot spot. Hot spot = areas where magma finds its way
through the Earth’s crust emerging on the ocean floor, cooling and hardening over and
over, forming under water domes.
 The volcanoes that border the Pacific plate in the Ring of Fire form at the convergent
boundary.
Name:____________________________________________ Period: _______ Date:___________________
Discovery Education
Continents Adrift: An Introduction to Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics Video Questions
1. What evidence did Alfred Wegner give to support his theory of continental drift?
2. What evidence did exploration of the ocean floor reveal to further support Wegener’s theory?
3. How does the movement of tectonic plates occur?
4. What are the three types of tectonic plate movement? What changes in the surface of the
earth might each of these cause?
5. What are the differences between the volcanoes that formed the Hawaiian Islands and those
bordering the Pacific plate in the Ring of Fire?