Dynamic Earth

What Forces do scientists think cause tectonic plates to move?

Scientists believe the all the continents are floating around on the mantle which is liquid and the continents keep moving away from where they started in the super continent called Pangaea. If you look at a map that shows the previous movements of the continents, they all fit together and you can see their paths of their movement. It makes sense that they are floating on the mantle. The mantle is a liquid and its what the crust is sitting on. The mantle is not very dense so it would make sense that the continents float around on it. I think about a bunch of rubber ducks in a bath tub and they will move once there is a disturbance in the water. That is a basic explanation of what happened to make the continents spread apart.

According to the theory of plate tectonics, what changes will occur to the oceans and the continents over the next millions of years?

No one actually knows what may happen within the next million years but I believe that the continents will continue moving  away from each other and eventually, North America is going to collide with Asia and Japan because they are in a collision coarse towards each other. I think that the pacific ocean is going o shrink and all the water from the pacific ocean is going to go under South America and connect with the Atlantic and the Atlantic will be even bigger. The biggest ocean. The plates underneath the oceans are still having magma come up and form new crust so either way there is going to be more Continental drift.  

Opinion on Article

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/expeditions/2014/09/29/return-to-the-antikythera-shipwreck-marine-archeology-goes-high-tech/

I have just read an article for my Oceanography class and now I have to write my Opinion.

I thought it was a really interesting article of a ship wreck that was found in the Mediterranean sea. I liked that there was more than just a sunken boat, but there was also treasure involved. I thought it was weird on how long it took for some diver to actually find it. 70 years is a long time. I'm surprised that no one reported a boat missing back in the really early 1900s when the boat first sunk. I liked how they used the top of the line equipment to get the boat to the surface and I thought that picture of the submersible suit could be used on the moon. I thought this article was really cool.

Historical roots of Oceanography

          There is a lot of history behind the roots of the ocean exploration. Back in the 1400s is when ocean exploration got more involved with the world. Compasses and maps were being used to help explorers navigate and find new parts of the world that were not found before. Technology slowly got better as each century passed and ocean exploration got easier as well. The compass was definitely one of the best tools made for an ocean explorer. The first compass was made in china between 2nd century BC and 1st century Ad. They have been used in ocean exploration forever and they are still used today in some occasions. Charts were also used on maps for a long time. On maps there is grid lines that go horizontaly and vertically which is longitude and latitude which are marked as degrees. It is a technique to find a specific spot on a map and people still use it today. A Portuguese explorer names Ferdinand Magellan used both the compass and the map (with degrees) to do his expedition which led him across the pacific. His expedition was the first to explore across the Pacific ocean and it was on accident. Another invention that was made in the 1700s was the chronometer. The chronometer is a tool used to tell what time it is. Its a great tool because it will work in any region of the world. There is a technique for travel called celestial navigation. Celestial navigation is navigation used by the sun, moon, and stars. All together it can work like a compass because the sun rises on the east and sets on the west, and the north star points towards the north. It was a very clever way to explore when there wasn't much technology.