Well, I am very sad to announce this, but my tectonic tour is now over. I really enjoyed touring you guys around the world and taking you to some great places. Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you guys learned something along the way. Thanks.
I realize as I read my blog that I have been taking you
around the world, and explaining plate tectonics to you guys. So to finish it
all off, let’s make a quick stop at New Zealand. It is home to some of the
coolest animals, including dolphins, seals, whales and many other cool animals.
It is also home to some pretty cool plate tectonic stuff. New Zealand is right
on the border of the Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate and their
convergent subduction boundary. The Pacific Plate is going underneath the
Australian Plate, thus named a subduction boundary. Well anyways, just another
cool plate tectonic related thing to check out. Thanks for reading my blog.
Here is a nice picture of the Pontic Mountains for you to enjoy.
You know what, Turkey is a great thing to eat, but I hear
the country is even better. And guess what, it is. I’m here in Turkey right
now, and it’s a great place. A very beautiful place and very good food. I’m
here trying to figure out where to go now, and I guess I just want to go back
to the hotel. As I sit here typing this, I really want to find out more about
this country. Well as I’m writing this entry I’m finding myself wanting to go
back to the blog I wrote in 8th grade during our plate tectonics
tour and see if I had anything about Turkey…..Wow, I actually did have something
about Turkey. Let’s see, I have stuff about the Pontic Mountains. They look
really nice, I think I might want to visit them…..Actually, I don’t think so.
You see as I read my 8th grade blog, I realize that it is actually
not such a good idea to visit them. They are really nice though. But the one
problem is, well, apparently the experts are predicting an earthquake to hit
Turkey sooner or later. Again I wrote this in 8th grade, and there
was no earthquake back then so it’s probably going to happen sometime now, here
in the near future. You can never be sure, but I’m going to stay on the safe
side and predict an earthquake and stay away from those mountains. The thing
is, the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate are colliding and that is why the
Pontic Mountains are here. In a convergent collision boundary, the two plates
collide rise up and form a mountain range or mountain. It differs from a
subduction zone because none of the plates go under another. Well, if mountains
are just really big rocks, then I wouldn’t want to take them for granite. HA HA
HA….. Did I just say the same joke twice? Wow…That was a terrible joke. Terrible, terrible, plain old terrible.
Here is a picture of convergent subduction and convergent collision. Collision on top of course.
http://toomuchnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/1299898821-92.jpg
Here is another picture of the Andes Mountains.
Man, that guy was cool. This new spy show is great. The only
thing is that it takes place in South America and they speak Protégés and
Spanish. Thus meaning that I have no idea what they are saying. But they do
have great scenes in this episode with the Andes in the background. Those look
so cool; I really want to climb those, even though I know I won’t make it all
to way to the top. But again, thinking back to my middle school days, and
thinking about how these mountains are formed. Well, they are formed by the
Nazaca Plate and the South American Plate forming a convergent subduction
boundary. The Nazaca Plate is sliding under the South American Plate, and over
millions of years and the piling up of the oceans bottom and crust, they formed
the Andes. Wow, I hope that guy doesn’t die. And….never mind, he just did.
There goes one good guy. Well, until next time, have a good time and don’t take
rocks for granite……
Because of the earthquake, we had to cut our trip short. The
whole trip back I kept on thinking about what we studied in 8th
grade. Now that I had a chance to finally put my knowledge to use, I thought
long and hard about the different type of plate boundaries. Convergent (where
two plates come together and form a subduction zone if one moves under the
other), divergent boundaries (like the Arabian and the African plates, where
two plates slide apart), and transform boundaries (where plates grind past each
other). It was a long flight back to the states. We stopped in Frankfurt from
Ethiopia, and then we flew to D.C. Now we were on the way to L.A. for one last
stop before going home back to Seattle. That’s when the most amazing thing
happened. The flight attendant had gotten word from the pilot of some bad news.
She picked up the microphone and told us that everything was fine on the plane,
but there had been an earthquake in L.A. She told us not to worry and that we
would be fine, but we would have to stop in Seattle and we would be able to get
flights to wherever we needed to go it was good for us, but bad for a lot of
other people. Even though we were home, in the midst of all of the chaos, it
took us about an hour to find our bags. We picked them up and found a taxi. We
took the taxi home and as soon as I could, I pulled out my laptop. I did some research
before putting this blog entry up. I had to make sure my facts were correct.
The Pacific Plate and the north American Plates had formed a transform
boundary. They were right there in California, and that is why the earthquake
happened. Anyways, its been a long day and I’m tired as a dog. I don’t know how
that works, but okay…..
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/img/news/2009/Pacific_NA%20Plate%20movement.gif
It was a great day today. Mostly. I was having a great time
visiting my family here in Ethiopia, seeing people that I hadn’t seen since I was
4. People I don’t even know, people I don’t remember. It was going great.
Meeting more people, eating, laughing and having a great time. Then we felt a
shaking. First I thought I was just imagining it. I didn’t know that
earthquakes happened here. If any there were only few in the history of this
county. That’s when I remembered what I had learned in Earth science back in 8th
grade. The Arabian plate and the African plates met north of the border of the
country. They had a divergent boundary, which meant that the plates were moving
away from each other. The only reason that the Red Sea actually existed was because
the two plates were moving away from each other which created an opening
between North East Africa and the Southern part of the Middle East.
http://www.opinionbug.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/arab20plate20tectonic20setting1.jpg
This is my tectonic tour. So the story starts off with me visiting family in Ethiopia, then, well you can read the rest. So anyways, thanks for reading and hope you enjoy. I also hope you learn a little bit about plate tectonics along the way. Hope you have a wonderful ride. 🙂
mytectonictour 
