1. How are plate movements harmful to people? How are they beneficial?

2. What was Pangaea and when did it exist?

3. Which of today’s continents made up Laurasia and Gondwana?

4. What theory did Alfred Wegener develop? In what year? On what evidence did he base his theory?

5. Was Wegener’s theory accepted by his colleagues during his lifetime? Why or why not?

6. What is plate tectonics theory? How is it the same as, and how is it different from, continental drift theory?

7. What geophysical evidence was used to develop plate tectonics theory?

8. What is a lithospheric plate, and how many are there?

9. How are the plate boundaries determined?

10. Why do the plates move?

11. Using relative velocity, how fast do the plates move?

12. What does it mean to say that plate tectonics is a unifying theory?

13. Describe the movements of lithospheric plates at divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries.

14. What is a mid-ocean ridge? Where do they form? How do they form?

15. What is rifting? Where does it occur? What happens to a continent when rifting occurs on it?

16. How does rifting relate to the formation of new oceanic crust and new ocean basins?

17. How does rifting create a new plate boundary?

18. What is subduction? At what type of plate boundary does it occur?

19. Describe the relative ages of oceanic crust and continental crust and explain why they are different.

20. What is a Wadati-Benioff zone, and how does it provide supporting evidence for subduction?

21. What is the Pacific Ring of Fire? What kinds of mountains form along the Pacific Ring of Fire?

22. What is collision? What kind of mountains results from collision? Give a real-world example.

23. What are accreted terranes? Where do they come from, and why do they pile up against continental margins? Why do they not subduct?

24. What is a transform plate boundary? What kind of landforms do transform plate boundaries produce?

25. Compare an active to a passive continental margin.

26. What is a hot spot? What physical features on Earth are produced by hot spots?

27. What is a hot spot track? Explain how they are formed.

28. How are rocks folded? What is the difference between folding and faulting?

29. Compare anticlines with synclines. What is an inverted topography and how does it form?

30. What is a fault block? What do fault blocks create?

31. What is orogenesis? Review the major mountain ranges of the world and the tectonic formation of each.

32. When and how did the Tibetan Plateau and its mountains form?

33. What does it mean that the Tibetan Plateau is a climate driver? In what three ways does the plateau modify climate?

34. What is happening currently to the plateau’s glaciers? Why?

35. What are the connections among geologic uplift, glaciers, rivers, and feeding people?