Term 1 Week 2 · Three Ways Two Plates Meet · CG Quarter 1, competency 2
| # | The misconception | Where it shows | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The plates float on a layer of liquid magma | §C4, exit ticket 3 | S-waves cross the asthenosphere and cannot cross a liquid. Glacier ice flows without melting and so does hot rock |
| 2 | Every convergent boundary has a trench | §C2, worksheet ★ | The paper model. Two continents crumple upward and nothing sinks, so there is nothing for a trench to be |
| 3 | A plate is the same thing as a continent | Game Round 3 | Most plates carry both kinds of crust and some carry almost no land at all. Show any plate map |
| 4 | Plate boundaries follow coastlines | Game Round 3 | The Atlantic coast of Africa is not a boundary; the ridge is, thousands of kilometres out. Coastlines are made by sea level |
| 5 | Nothing is built at a transform boundary, so nothing happens there | §C3 | Nothing built, shallow quakes, close to where people live. Building nothing and doing nothing are different things |
| 6 | Volcanoes only form where plates collide | §C1 | Divergent boundaries erupt more or less continuously — that is how ocean floor is made. Gently, which is why nobody pictures it |
| 7 | A deeper earthquake is a worse earthquake | §C3 | Depth means the energy has more rock to cross before it reaches anybody. Shallow quakes at transform boundaries are among the most destructive there are |