Explain how continental drift is possible and why it happens?
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Step 1: get recipe or package for traditionally made pudding at the store. The kind that requires you to cook it on the stove.
Step 2: make it per directions and note during the final stages how the pudding behaves.
Your stove is the earth’s core
The pudding that is rising up and bubbling is the mantle.
The surface of the pudding is the earth’s crust. Cool enough to mostly maintain its shape. Practically solid but still being affected by neighboring material, including what’s below it. Heat rises and heated rock is no different. The heat itself causes it to expand and become less dense than cooler rock.
Convection is the result: a circle of heating and cooling of the material. At the surface, farthest from heat source, the rock starts to become more dense again and sink, but is pushed off to the side first. The push is what is forcing the solid surface rock apart at the “seams.” Making it all the way to the top means that the material can join the existing solid crust meanwhile where the force of the flow is less, possibly in a cooler area, some crust is being pushed against other crust and one side slides underneath the other, sinking, and starting the cycle over.
Seams are where volcanoes form. The collision of crust where it’s cooler is where you get earthquakes and mountain ranges as one continent is sliding over the top of the other.
Over time, the surface shape changes as the seams push continents apart or force the other sides of the plates together.
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