Tectonic plate interaction boundaries: Divergent, Convergent, and Transform

These are the main types of tectonic plate interaction boundaries:

• Divergent, for example the Mid-Atlantic ridge, the Great Rift Valley
• Convergent, for example the Andes, the Himalayas)
• Transform, for example the San Andreas Fault, the Dead Sea Transform).

There are some sub-varieties but these are the main ones. It makes natural sense, so there needn't be remembering to do. When you have two contacting plates, they can either be pushing together, pulling apart or rubbing past each other.

The idea that the giant continents move around all the time, enough to pull apart South America and Africa, and thrust up the Himalayas, obvious as it may seem now, was once not at all obvious. And if you stand on the ground in a big landscape, it’s kind of amazing to think of just what an amazing notion it was to propose.

I read about it in Bill Bryson’s, A Short History of Nearly Everything should you be interested in the characters that had the courage to seriously propose it.

I revised the original sketch for my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

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Also see:

• Types of Dune
• The 3 Tallest Mountains
• Settlement Patterns
• Shapes of Valleys
• Topography - Bathymetry
• Rain Shadow
• Types of Surf Break
• Point Nemo — the remotest place in the oceans