Why are there ocean basins continents and mountains?
The convective motion of the Earth’s solid mantle creates ocean basins, moves continents across the face of the Earth (termed continental drift), and pushes up mountains. Convection is the process of the buoyant rise of hot rock and the sinking of cooler rock, and is the main way in which heat is lost from the interior of the Earth. Interactive videos showing the convection currents give visitors the chance to see and understand how the process works. Upon entering this zone, visitors walk beneath a suspended model of a section of the Earth’s lithosphere — the crust and rigid part of the upper mantle — spanning the Gulf of Mexico, across North America, and to the Northeastern Pacific Ocean. In addition, videos further explain how plate tectonics — the theory that the Earth’s crust is divided into a number of rigid plates that are in motion relative to each other — continually reshapes the planet’s topography. Further along in this zone, two sandstone rocks — one from Siccar Point,
