At our second stop we will be visiting the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Here at the ridge you can see a great example of a divergent boundary. A divergent boundary is between to plates that are moving in opposite directions. Most divergent boundaries that occur, form along the ocean floor, commonly resulting in the up rising of molten rock through cracks creating a thing called a rift. Once the molten rock cools, it hardens into new ocean crusts. The old crusts moves away form the mid-ocean ridge. A first valley in the ocean is broken into many different pieces that or separated from each other by breaks in the lithosphere called fracture zones. the fracture zones tend to run perpendicular to the ridge. Because of movements along the fracture zones, many earthquakes have been noted to occur here, as you can see by the gray circles on Google Earth.
I'm so glad that I get to visit this grand ridge. I am hoping that my snorkel will enable me to dive deep into the water and explore the underwater volcanoes that make their home here. There have been many earthquakes here, some small, and some 7.0 quakes. I was thinking that maybe I would bring a blender and my Quake-Converter 10000, see if I can make myself a smoothie underwater!
The Mid Atlantic Ridge: (platetectonics.com)
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