Plate Motion
Plate Motion :
The geonmetrical combination of three fundamental kinds of relative plate motions produces the observed plate patterns on Earth. Pairs of plates in contact at mutual boundaries either move apart (plate divergence), toward one another (plate convergence), or slip sideways past one another along structural ruptures (transform faults). The topology of plate boundaries on a sphere also dictates that three plates locally meet at common junctures (triple junctions), which may involve any of the three kinds of plate boundaries in any combination. The present Earth may be divided into six major and six smaller plates, with various additional microplates that jostle between the larger plates along some plate boundaries. See Euler vector. See also Uyeda (2002), and Stein and Klosko (2002), and Dickinson (2002)
