Below is the full Quizmo quiz devoted to the theme "Plate Tectonics": each question, its four options, the correct answer highlighted and, where available, its source. A chance to brush up on your general knowledge and then test what you know.
▶ Play today's quizWhat was the name of the single ancient supercontinent where all land was joined together?
Source: Around 300 million years ago every continent was fused into Pangaea, Greek for 'all earth'.
Earth's rigid outer shell is broken into large moving pieces known as what?
Source: There are about a dozen major plates, drifting like rafts on the hotter layer below.
Which mountain range, the world's tallest, was pushed up by two colliding plates and is still rising?
Source: India slamming into Asia raised the Himalayas, which still grow about a centimetre a year.
Which scientist first proposed in 1912 that the continents had once been joined and slowly drifted apart?
Source: Wegener was mocked for decades before seafloor evidence finally proved him right.
The volcano-packed 'Ring of Fire' encircles the edges of which ocean?
Source: About 75% of the world's active volcanoes line the rim of the Pacific.
Tectonic plates slowly slide on top of a hot, partly flowing layer called the what?
Source: The mantle behaves like extremely stiff toffee, flowing just centimetres a year.
The famous San Andreas Fault, source of major quakes, runs through which US state?
Source: California sits where two plates grind past each other along the San Andreas.
When one oceanic plate slides down beneath another plate, this sinking process is called what?
Source: Subducting plates melt and feed the volcanoes towering above them.
Molten rock from plate activity erupting and building up at the surface forms what?
Source: Most volcanoes mark spots where plates collide or pull apart, releasing magma.
Where two plates slowly pull apart on the ocean floor, the widening gap is filled by what?
Source: Fresh crust wells up at these ridges, making the Atlantic a little wider every year.
What is the main engine thought to drag the plates slowly across the globe?
Source: Heat rising and sinking in the mantle churns like a pot of soup, hauling the plates along.
Iceland is being slowly torn in two by which underwater mountain chain running beneath it?
Source: Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so you can literally walk between two plates there.
When ocean meets continent in a collision, which type of crust is denser and dives underneath?
Source: Oceanic crust is heavier, so it always loses the shoving match and sinks.
When two continents crash directly into each other, the usual dramatic result is what?
Source: Neither continent will sink, so the crust crumples upward into giant ranges.
Along the San Andreas Fault, the two plates mainly do what to each other?
Source: They scrape sideways, building stress that snaps loose as earthquakes, not volcanoes.
On average, how fast do the plates creep across the planet each year?
Source: Plates move about as fast as your fingernails grow, a few centimetres a year.
Most destructive tsunamis are set off by what kind of event?
Source: A seabed jolt shoves the whole water column, launching waves that cross oceans.
Hawaii's volcanoes sit far from any plate edge, fed instead by what rising from deep below?
Source: A fixed hotspot plume burns through the moving plate, leaving a trail of islands.
Plate tectonics only became widely accepted by scientists during which decade?
Source: Seafloor mapping in the 1960s finally turned a ridiculed idea into mainstream science.
Seafloor spreading was confirmed by discovering symmetrical, mirror-image bands of what on the ocean floor?
Source: As new crust cools it records Earth's flipping magnetic field in matching stripes either side of a ridge.