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Mohammed Haye's & Arun Sharma's Page.
Divergent Plate Boundaries
Divergent boundaries are plates that move away from one another causing underwater volcanoes and the spreading of the seafloor. e.g. Eurasian plate moving away from the North American plate.
When divergent plates move they move away from each other. When two oceanic plates move away from each other the seafloor starts to spread apart creating gaps where magma rises through, cools and makes more land.
Why do they move apart?
Deep in the mantle are huge convection currents. When the molten rock moves up because of the convection currents, the plates start to move apart because of the rising convection currents pushing on the bottom of the plates.
At divergent plate boundaries volcanoes and earthquakes occur because of the plates moving apart.
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