Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article
Deutsche Physikalische Gessellschaft IOP Institute of Physics

Tectonic microplates in a wax model of sea-floor spreading

Richard F Katz1, Rolf Ragnarsson2 and Eberhard Bodenschatz2,3

Show affiliations


Rotating, growing microplates are observed in a wax analogue model of sea-floor spreading. Wax microplates are kinematically similar to sea-floor tectonic microplates in terms of spreading rate and growth rate. Furthermore, their spiral pseudofault geometry is quantitatively consistent with Schouten's oceanic microplate model. These results suggest that Schouten's edge-driven microplate model captures the kinematics of tectonic microplate evolution on Earth. Based on the wax observations, a theory for the nucleation of overlapping spreading centres, the precursors of tectonic microplates, is developed.


PACS

91.50.Ey Ocean bottom processes

91.50.Ga Bathymetry and noncoastal underwater morphology

91.50.Rt Mid-ocean ridge processes

MSC

65F35 Matrix norms, conditioning, scaling (See also 15A12, 15A60)

Subjects

Environmental and Earth science

Dates

Issue 1 (January 2005)

Received 21 November 2004

Published 1 February 2005



Related review articles

What's this?
View review articles related to this research to gain an insight into the key trends in this subject area. Related review articles are selected based on PACS/MSC codes, and are no more than three years old.

  1. Tibetan singing bowls
  2. Arithmetic hypergeometric series
  3. Supergravity-based inflation models: a review
More

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.