Convergent Plate Boundaries Essay, Research Paper

When any two plates collide, some sort of activity is bound to take place. A specific type of boundary is a convergent plate boundary. At this type of boundary, two plates are moving towards each other. Neither plate is subducted into the mantle. Many things happen when plates drive into each other. Including volcanic activity. When two continents are on the edges of plates, the land crumples, and is deformed. There are numerous earthquakes as these mountains are formed. When two plates with sea floor boundaries collide, mountains do build up, but are rarely visible at the surface. At a sea floor to continent plate boundary, the sea floor lithosphere is subducted into the mantle, with almost the same effects. Most islands and island chains are results of volcanic activity. You see, even though neither plate is actually being subducted on two of the convergent plate boundaries, one plate is pushed a bit under the other normally. At the sea floor to continent boundary, the sea floor is subducted. As the plates move together, molten material from the mantle seeps up between the converging plates. The gap is closed as the plates move more into each other, locking the molten material in. This, by the way, happens at all of the convergent boundaries. After much time, pressure builds up as the molten material churns in its chamber. It gets hotter, and as we know from the laws of physics, heat rises due to its kinetic energy. So, as the pressure get to be too much, the molten material goes up.

As you may already know, molten material mostly does not just come out of a big hole in the ground. It comes out of mountains. When the molten material is pushing up through to the surface of the land, the earth doesn t just move apart to let it through. The igneous rock that the lithosphere of comprised of gets pushed up with the material, forming the mountain you see the molten lava and ash spew out of it. Once this molten material cools, it forms more igneous rock, making the mountain larger. So as you can see, plates cause a lot of commotion when moving together. They deform the land, and create large mountains of mostly volcanic attributes. And it s not gentle, but our earth is tough; I think it can handle it.