Earth Science Practice Test: Plate Tectonics
- Plate Tectonics
- 10 questions
- 15 minutes
This test covers the evidence for moving plates and what happens where plates meet. Tip: match each boundary to its motion first (apart, together or sliding past), then to the landforms it builds.
Tap an option to mark your answer. You can change your mind, or tap the same option again to leave the question blank. The correct answers and explanations appear when you finish the test.Tap an option to answer; tap it again to leave the question blank.
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Question 1
Which observation did Alfred Wegener use as evidence for continental drift?
Correct answer: D
Mesosaurus could not have swum across an ocean, so finding its fossils on both continents suggested they were once joined. Wegener also used matching coastlines, rock layers and ancient climate clues.
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Question 2
The rigid lithospheric plates slowly move over which layer of Earth?
Correct answer: B
The asthenosphere is a hot, weak layer of the upper mantle that flows very slowly, letting the rigid lithosphere above it move. The crust is part of the lithosphere itself.
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Question 3
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and new ocean floor forms along it. What type of plate boundary is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge?
Correct answer: C
At a divergent boundary, plates move apart and magma rises to fill the gap, building new crust. Convergent boundaries, including subduction zones, are where plates move toward each other.
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Question 4
Scientists drill rock samples from the ocean floor at different distances from a mid-ocean ridge. What pattern in the ages of the rocks do they find?
Correct answer: A
New crust forms at the ridge and is pushed outward as more crust forms behind it, so age increases symmetrically away from the ridge. This pattern is key evidence for seafloor spreading.
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Question 5
The Himalayas formed mainly because of which kind of plate interaction?
Correct answer: B
The Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate. Continental crust is too buoyant to sink far, so the crust crumpled and thickened into the highest mountains on Earth.
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Question 6
Along the San Andreas Fault in California, the Pacific plate and the North American plate grind sideways past each other. What type of boundary is this?
Correct answer: A
At a transform boundary, plates slide horizontally past each other, causing frequent earthquakes but little volcanic activity. Crust is neither created nor destroyed there.
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Question 7
The Andes Mountains in South America include a long chain of volcanoes near the Pacific coast. Which process best explains these volcanoes?
Correct answer: C
The Nazca plate sinks beneath South America, and melting above the sinking plate feeds a volcanic arc on the continent. Continent-continent collisions, like the Himalayas, have few volcanoes.
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Question 8
When an oceanic plate meets a continental plate, why does the oceanic plate usually sink beneath the continent?
Correct answer: D
Oceanic crust is made of dense basalt, while continental crust is mostly lighter granite-like rock, so the denser plate sinks. Oceanic crust is also thinner, not thicker, than continental crust.
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Question 9
A plate moves at a steady 2.5 cm per year. About how far does it move in 4 million years?
Correct answer: B
2.5 cm/year × 4,000,000 years = 10,000,000 cm. Since 100,000 cm = 1 km, that is 100 km.
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Question 10
Rocks on the seafloor show stripes of normal and reversed magnetic polarity that run parallel to a mid-ocean ridge, mirrored on both sides. What do these stripes show?
Correct answer: D
As lava cools at the ridge, iron minerals lock in the direction of Earth's magnetic field. The field reverses from time to time, so spreading crust carries a mirrored record of reversals away from the ridge.
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