 Form a Greek word means “equal

standing”. As the rock is removed due to

erosion from the higher region and
deposited to a lower region as the result
the lower region gradually becomes
heavier and slowly sinks, while the higher
region slowly rises
 This means that the earth is gradually
shrinking. It emphasizes that the stronger
and heavier blocks of the crust is sinking
in and then the weaker strata are
squeezed upward
 This is where the continents have been
move above over the earth’s surface
 In 1834, during the second voyage of HMS Beagle, Charles
Darwin investigated stepped plains featuring raised beaches
in Patagonia which indicated to him that a huge area of
South America had been "uplifted to its present height by a
succession of elevations which acted over the whole of this
space with nearly an equal force." While his mentor Charles
Lyell had suggested forces acting near the crust on smaller
areas, Darwin hypothesized that uplift at this continental
scale required "the gradual expansion of some central mass"
[of the earth] "acting by intervals on the outer crust" with the
"elevations being concentric with form of globe (or certainly
nearly so)". In 1835 he extended this concept to include the
Andes as part of a curved enlargement of the earth's crust
due to "the action of one connected force". Not long
afterwards, he moved on from this idea and proposed that as
mountains rose, the ocean floor subsided, explaining the
formation of coral reefs
 Wegener thought all the continents were once joined
together in an "Urkontinent" before breaking up and
drifting to their current positions. But geologists soundly
denounced Wegener's theory of continental drift after he
published the details in a 1915 book called "The Origin of
Continents and Oceans." Part of the opposition was
because Wegener didn't have a good model to explain
how the continents moved apart.

 Though most of Wegener's observations about fossils and

rocks were correct, he was outlandishly wrong on a
couple of key points. For instance, Wegener thought the
continents might have plowed through the ocean crust
like icebreakers smashing through ice.
 Convection is the heat transfer due to bulk
movement of molecules within fluids such as gases
and liquids, including molten rock (rheid). Convection
takes place through advection, diffusion or both.

 Convection cannot take place in most solids

because neither bulk current flows nor significant
diffusion of matter can take place. Diffusion of heat
takes place in rigid solids, but that is called heat
conduction. Convection, however, can take place in
soft solids or mixtures where solid particles can move
past each other.
 Seafloor spreading is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges,
where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and
then gradually moves away from the ridge. Seafloor spreading helps
explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics. When
oceanic plates diverge, tensional stress causes fractures to occur in
the lithosphere. The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is
tectonic plate pull rather than magma pressure, although there is
typically significant magma activity at spreading ridges. At a
spreading center basaltic magma rises up the fractures and cools
on the ocean floor to form new seabed. Hydrothermal vents are
common at spreading centers. Older rocks will be found farther
away from the spreading zone while younger rocks will be found
nearer to the spreading zone. Additionally spreading rates
determine if the ridge is a fast, intermediate, or slow. As a general
rule, fast ridges see spreading rate of more than 9 cm/year.
Intermediate ridges have a spreading rate of 4–9 cm/year while
slow spreading ridges have a rate less than 4 cm/year.
 Plate tectonics is the theory that the outer rigid layer
of the earth (the lithosphere) is divided into a couple
of dozen "plates" that move around across the earth's
surface relative to each other, like slabs of ice on a
lake.
 The drawing above is a cross section of the earth
showing the components that lie within plate
tectonic theory. The cross section should really be
curved to correspond to the earth's curvature, but it
has been straightened out here.
 Note the continental craton (stable continent) in
the middle of the drawing. Note the line under the
craton; that is the lower boundary of the plate.
Everything above that line is the plate. All similar lines
in the cross section mark the bottom of the plates.
Technically, everything above that line is lithosphere,