The major islands of the state of Hawaii are formed from a line of separate volcanoes emerging from the ocean floor of the Pacific Plate. The line extends from Kauai in the northwest, to Hawai’i in the southeast over a range of hundreds of miles. Kauai was formed from volcanoes that formed about 5 million years ago; on Hawai’i the volcanoes are currently active
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Explain the process that formed the Hawaiian Islands and what information a geophysicist could determine about the motion of Earth’s parts from observing them.
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: In the deep layers of the mantle, a hot lump of basalt will rise and begin to melt. As it nears the surface, it will create a “magma plume,” a bubble of hot molten rock. This plume will eventually fuel a volcano under the ocean, which grows above the surface to form an island. The crustal plate moves as new volcanoes are created, causing the volcanoes to be spaced out in a line of separate islands. By observing the Hawaiian Islands, a geophysicist could conclude that the Pacific Plate is moving in the direction from Hawai’i towards Kauai, and that it must have moved at a certain speed to move Kauai away from the hot spot in the last five million years.?
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