What Is The Ocean Floor Made Of

Other articles where ocean floor is discussed.

What is the ocean floor made of.

From land the ocean all looks the same. The ocean floor has the same general character as the land areas of the world. How to use ocean in a sentence. Bathymetry the shape of the ocean floor is largely a result of a process called plate tectonics the outer rocky layer of the earth includes about a dozen large sections called tectonic plates that are arranged like a spherical jig saw puzzle floating on top of the earth s hot flowing mantle.

Back in 1977 a very interesting discovery was made on the deep ocean floor where no light penetrates. A symmetrical pattern of positive and negative magnetic lines emanates from the mid ocean ridge. They contain almost 98 percent of all the water on earth. Oceans cover nearly 71 percent of earth s surface.

Oceanic crust is about 6 km 4 miles thick. Oceanic crust the outermost layer of earth s lithosphere that is found under the oceans and formed at spreading centres on oceanic ridges which occur at divergent plate boundaries. There are four basic types of sediment of the sea floor. These vary from oozes made of carbonate from foraminiferal and calcareous phytoplankton and some silica that has settled through the water column.

Plate tectonics and the ocean floor. Exploration of the seafloor and the earth s crust. Ocean definition is the whole body of salt water that covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the earth. 1 terrigenous describes the sediment derived from the materials eroded by rain rivers glaciers and that which is blown into the ocean by the wind such as volcanic ash.

Most of the seafloor is covered by sediments that average 350 m thick. But underneath that surface there s a lot of stuff hidden at the bottom. It is composed of several layers not including the overlying sediment. New rock is formed by magma at the mid ocean ridges and the ocean floor spreads out from this point.

The oceanic crust displays a pattern of magnetic lines parallel to the ocean ridges frozen in the basalt. The lack of weathering and erosion in most areas however allows geological processes to be seen more clearly on. An ocean is a huge body of salt water. While most life on this planet requires sunlight to live there is an.

In the deepest parts of the.