Next Stop: Iceland

I had to be evacuated so I decided to go to Iceland and learn more about different kinds of plates. Iceland is a divergent fault. That means that the two plates are pulling apart from each other. It is on top of the boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. They are coming apart and there is a giant crack down island. Iceland is made from a hot spot near by. It has one of the newest islands in the world. It came up in the 1960s. As the plates pull apart lava can come up more easily and it is squeezed up in other places at the other ends of the plates where they are smashing into other plates.

When two Plates pull apart they create a rift. This is called the Mid atlantic rift. It is like a giant sea trench that spans the length of the plates that are pulling apart from each other.

http://www.platetectonics.com/book/images/Divergent1.gif