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tectonic plates
- The dozen or so plates that make up the surface of the Earth . Their motion is studied in the field of plate tectonics .
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Notes
The plates are not the same as the continents . The North American plate, for example, extends from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to the west coast of the United States and Canada . These plates are about thirty miles thick.
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Example Sentences
Some time ago, say a few million years ago, several tectonic plates collided.
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Mars has no tectonic plates—no continents, in other words—and no ginormous moon.
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Underneath our feet tectonic plates shift, magma bubbles, water boils, and both regularly erupt.
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These tectonic plates are likely to shift gradually, and this is part of it.
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