1. Plate Tectonic Theory
Plate Tectonic Theory states that the Earth's outer layer is fragmented into plates that are in
constant motion. The movement's rate has been determined to be approximately 5 - 10 cm per year (2
- 6 inches per year), depending on location of the plates.
These plates ride atop a part of the Earth's mantle called the asthenosphere. It is a hot, dense and
partially molten (but not liquid)part of the Earth. Moreover, it flows with a type of movement
called convection.
Convection currents beneath the plates move the plates in different directions. The source of heat
driving the convection currents is radioactive decay which is happening deep in the Earth.The edges of
these plates, where they move against each other, are sites of intense geologic activity, such
as earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building. As plate movement occurs, the plates sometimes
stick together and then slip. This sudden slippage causes vibrations known as earthquakes.
Plate tectonics is a combination of two earlier ideas, continental drift and sea-floor
spreading. Continental drift is the movement of continents over the Earth's surface and in their change
in position relative to each other. On the other hand, Sea-floor spreading is the creation of new oceanic
crust at mid-ocean ridges and movement of the crust away from the mid-ocean ridges.
Plate tectonics theory helps us understand the underlying causes of the major topographic features of
the Earth, as well as the reasons why some areas of the world are frequently devastated by
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Contributions of The Plate Tectonic Theory
The [ [theory of Plate Tectonics]] revolutionized the understanding of geology. Some geologic facts
were found out to be interrelated as a result of the Plate
1. The distribution of volcanoes along the edges of continents and around the rim of the Pacific
Ocean (Ring of Fire)
2. The association of deep ocean trenches with volcanic mountain chains,
3. The presence of a huge undersea mountain range with a central valley, which encircles the
globe (see image above),
4. The geographic distribution of mountain ranges (and their various ages and types of
deformation),
5. The geographic distribution of earthquakes, which occur in lines, and deep earthquakes which
occur along inclined planes,
6. The geographic distribution of certain types of fossils

2. 7. The distribution of certain types of sedimentary rocks which can be used
as paleoclimate (ancient climate) indicators,
8. The age of the oceanic crust
9. Sediment thickness distribution patterns in the ocean basins.
Divergent boundary
In plate tectonics, a divergent boundary or divergent plate boundary (also known as
a constructive boundary or an extensional boundary) is a linear feature that exists between
two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other. Divergent boundaries
withincontinents initially produce rifts which produce rift valleys. Most active divergent plate
boundaries occur between oceanic plates and exist as mid-oceanic ridges. Divergent boundaries
also form volcanic islands which occur when the plates move apart to produce gaps which molten
lava rises to fill..
Current research indicates that complex convection within the Earth's mantle allows material to
rise to the base of the lithospherebeneath each divergent plate boundary.[1] This supplies the area
with vast amounts of heat and a reduction in pressure that melts rockfrom the asthenosphere (or
upper mantle) beneath the rift area forming large flood basalt or lava flows. Each eruption occurs
in only a part of the plate boundary at any one time, but when it does occur, it fills in the opening
gap as the two opposing plates move away from each other.
Over millions of years, tectonic plates may move many hundreds of kilometers away from both
sides of a divergent plate boundary. Because of this, rocks closest to a boundary are younger than
rocks further away on the same plate.
Description
Bridge across the Álfagjá rift valley in southwest Iceland, that is
part of the boundary between the Eurasian and North American
continental tectonic plates.
At divergent boundaries, two plates move apart from each other and the space that this creates is
filled with new crustal material sourced from molten magma that forms below. The origin of new

3. divergent boundaries at triple junctions is sometimes thought to be associated with the phenomenon
known as hotspots. Here, exceedingly large convective cells bring very large quantities of hot
asthenospheric material near the surface and the kinetic energy is thought to be sufficient to break
apart the lithosphere. The hot spot which may have initiated the Mid-Atlantic Ridge system currently
underlies Iceland which is widening at a rate of a few centimeters per year.
Divergent boundaries are typified in the oceanic lithosphere by the rifts of the oceanic ridge system,
including the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise, and in the continental lithosphere by rift
valleys such as the famous East African Great Rift Valley. Divergent boundaries can create massive
fault zones in the oceanic ridge system. Spreading is generally not uniform, so where spreading rates of
adjacent ridge blocks are different, massive transform faults occur. These are the fracture zones, many
bearing names, that are a major source of submarine earthquakes. A sea floor map will show a rather
strange pattern of blocky structures that are separated by linear features perpendicular to the ridge
axis. If one views the sea floor between the fracture zones as conveyor belts carrying the ridge on each
side of the rift away from the spreading center the action becomes clear. Crest depths of the old ridges,
parallel to the current spreading center, will be older and deeper... (from thermal contraction
and subsidence).[citation needed]
It is at mid-ocean ridges that one of the key pieces of evidence forcing acceptance of the seafloor
spreading hypothesis was found. Airborne geomagnetic surveys showed a strange pattern of
symmetrical magnetic reversals on opposite sides of ridge centers. The pattern was far too regular to be
coincidental as the widths of the opposing bands were too closely matched. Scientists had been
studying polar reversals and the link was made by Lawrence W. Morley, Frederick John
Vine and Drummond Hoyle Matthews in theMorley–Vine–Matthews hypothesis. The magnetic banding
directly corresponds with the Earth's polar reversals. This was confirmed by measuring the ages of the
rocks within each band. The banding furnishes a map in time and space of both spreading rate and
polar reversals.

4. Biography of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865 at Bombay, India,
where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, himself an artist, was principal of
the Jeejeebyhoy Art School. His mother, Alice Macdonald Kipling, had three
sisters who married well: among his uncles young Rudyard could number
not only the famous painters Sir Edward Burne-Jones (one of the most
important of the Pre-Raphaelites) and Sir Edward Poynter but Stanley
Baldwin, a future Prime Minister, and all three family connections were to
be of great importance in Kipling's life. His early years in India, until he
reached the age of six, seem to have been idyllic, but in 1871 the Kipling
family returned to England. After six months John and Alice Kipling
returned to India, leaving six-year old Rudyard and his three-year-old
sister as boarders with the Holloway family in Southsea. During his five
years in this foster home he was bullied and physically mistreated, and the
experience left him with deep psychological scars and a sense of betrayal.
Between 1878 and 1882 he attended the United Services College at Westward Ho in north Devon. The
College was a new and very rough boarding school where, nearsighted and physically frail, he was once
again teased and bullied, but where, nevertheless, he developed fierce loyalties and a love of literature.
In 1882 Kipling returned to India, where he spent the next seven years working in various capacities as
a journalist and editor and where he began to write about India itself and the Anglo-Indian society which
presided over it. His first volume of poetry, Departmental Ditties, was published in 1886, and between 1887
and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories (the first was Plain Tales from the Hills, the first of the
"Indian Railway Series") set in and concerned with the India he had come to know and love so well: when he
returned to England in 1889 via the United States he found himself already acclaimed as a brilliant young
writer. The reissue in London of his "Indian Railway Series" titles, includingSoldiers Three, In Black and White,
and The Phantom Rickshaw, brought him even greater fame, and in 1890 The Light That Failed, his first
novel (which was only modestly successful) also appeared. By the time Barrack-Room Ballads had
appeared in 1892, the year Tennyson died, Kipling was an enormous popular and critical success.
In 1891 he planned a round-the-world voyage, but travelled only to South Africa, Australia, New
Zealand, and India, which he would never visit again. In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier, an
American. Their honeymoon took them as far as Japan, but they returned, not altogether to Kipling's
satisfaction, to live at his wife's home in Vermont, where they remained until 1899, when Kipling, alone,
returned to England. During the American years, however, Kipling wrote Captain's Courageous, Many
Inventions, the famous poem "Recessional," and most of Kim, as well as the greater portion of the two Jungle
Books, all of which were very successful.
Stalky & Co., which drew heavily upon his experiences at the United Services College, was published in
1899. During the same year Kipling made his last visit to the United States, and was deeply affected by the
death of his eldest child, Josephine. Frequently in poor health himself, Kipling would winter in South Africa
every year between 1900 and 1908.
In 1902 he bought the house ("Bateman's") in Sussex which would remain his home in England until his
death: Sussex itself lies at the center of books like Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, which,
though they are ostensibly for children, concern themselves with the ambiguous sense of historical, national,
and racial identity which lay beneath Kipling's Imperialism.
In 1907 Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but his Imperialist sentiments, which grew
stronger as he grew older, put him more and more out of touch with political, social, and moral realities.

5. In 1915 his son John was killed in action during World War I, and in 1917 he published A Diversity of
Creatures, a collection of short stories which included "Mary Postgate."
Between 1919 and 1932 Kipling travelled intermittently, and continued to publish stories, poems,
sketches, and historical works. He died in London on January 18, 1936, just after his seventieth birthday, and
was buried (beside T. S. Eliot, oddly enough) in Westminster Abbey. His pallbearers included a prime
minister, an admiral, a general, and the head of a Cambridge college. The following year saw the
posthumous publication of the autobiographical Something of Myself.
Rudyard Kipling by E.O. Hoppé (1912)
Born Joseph Rudyard Kipling
30 December 1865
Bombay, Bombay Presidency,British India
Died 18 January 1936 (aged 70)
Middlesex Hospital, London, England
Occupation Short story writer, novelist, poet, journalist
Nationality British
Genres Short story, novel, children's literature,
poetry, travel literature, science fiction
Notable The Jungle Book
work(s) Just So Stories
Kim
"If—"
"Gunga Din"
Notable Nobel Prize in Literature
award(s) 1907