Dr. Nelson's Plate Tectonics Paradigm Unit...

...and Geoff Hagopian's Solutions
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Spinning globe

Consider the underwater topography between the Americas, and Europe/Africa. Is there a correlation among mountain ranges, active volcanoes, and earthquakes?

The detail of the map found USGS map shown at right shows most of the volcanoes (red dots) of this region together with the boundaries between these plates (where most earthquakes occur.) Most of these volcanoes are pretty close to the seams. One exception to this is Fogo on Cape Verdi Island off the coast of Senegal. There are some nice pictures of the volcano here: http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_fogo.html

The colors below and the picture shown here depict color-coded absolute ages of the sea floor. In the Atlantic, where is the sea floor youngest and where is it oldest?

Not surprisingly, the Atlantic sea floor is youngest where the tectonic plates are separating, as along the Atlantic ridge. If you can figure out why the eastern Pacific appears younger is than the west, please

Map of sea floor ages - courtesy of NOAA

(Click globes to enlarge. Caution: the enlarged version of this image is very large)

If the continents are merely drifting apart, why is the sea floor age so different? The global answer to this questions is known the Theory of Plate Tectonics.

This is because where plates are drifting apart new crust is made by magma forced up to the surface to create new crust (mostly sea floor); and where plates are pushed together, especially underwater, subduction occurs and causes old lithosphere to be recycled back to the asthenosphere.