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- Earth has changed alot over time. There are alot of reasons for that but two of them are Plate Tectonics, and Pangea. Plate Tectonics are the plates that causes earthquakes (see the Plate Tectonics page). And Pangea is the theory that all of the continents used to be one big land. But over time they all separated and made continents.
- The surface of the Earth is in continuous slow motion. This is plate tectonics--the motion of immense rigid plates at the surface of the Earth in response to flow of rock within the Earth. The plates cover the entire surface of the globe. Since they are all moving they rub against each other in some places (like the San Andreas Fault in California), sink beneath each other in others (like the Peru-Chile Trench along the western border of South America), or spread apart from each other (like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge). At such places the motion isn't smooth--the plates are stuck together at the edges but the rest of each plate is continuing to move, so the rocks along the edges are distorted. As the motion continues, the distorted builds up to the point where the rock cannot do any more bending. The rock breaks and the two sides move. An earthquake is the shaking that radiates out from the breaking rock.
- They change the earth in many ways, two major ways are; firstly they change the amount of land mass or water at the poles and equator, affecting the earths temperature greatly, and also they create or destroy land routes between continents. at one point all the land on earth was one large mass and you could have walked around one coastline! So in terms of how they affect the earth, this would be two ways that in turn have some huge ramifications. Tectonic plates are largely defined by fault lines and subduction zones that surround them. They move through a process of subduction where new land is created in the middle and disappears, often beneath continents, at the edges. this often means that large continents are pushed apart, but that is not always the case. the important thing to realize is that the earths crust is very thin to its non-solid interior, and as such moves about quite freely over time. a million years from now the earth will look quite different than today!
- Earthquakes can effect the local community, but since Texas doesn't get very strong earthquakes it can't effect us as much as it can in other places.