Plate Tectonics Lesson Plan

This lesson plan on plate tectonics is a real crowd pleaser because you get to eat the demonstration when you have finished! It is easy to do and it demonstrates the action of a transform fault like the famous San Andreas Fault in California.

Lesson/Demonstration #5b: Transform Boundaries demonstration

Direct Aims:

To understand what happens to the land at the transform boundaries
To understand how plates move side by side as well as away from and toward one another

Indirect Aims:

Preparation for understanding different types of transform faults

Materials:

Two layered-wafer cookies for each pair of students
Piece of paper, larger than the wafers, labeled N, S, E, W for the cardinal directions
Tube of frosting (chocolate or tinted black)
Geographic Map that shows plate boundaries

Procedure

Review Lesson 5 in which you defined transform boundaries.

Lay the cookies side-by-side on the paper in a northwesterly direction. (Cookies represent the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate)

Spread a line of frosting across the two cookies. (To represent a road.)

Move the cookie on the left in a northwesterly direction, while moving the cookie on the right in a westerly direction.

Observe: Do the plates move or stick? Is there sideways motion? What happens along the edges of the plates? What happens to the road?

Show the students the location of the San Andreas Fault in California. This is a transform Boundary / Fault between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate.

Students may lay arrows on a globe to demonstrate the direction the plates are moving.

Explanation for the teacher/science behind the work: The transform boundaries occur between plates that are sliding by each other in opposite directions. Transform Faults occur at these locations and there are frequent earthquakes.

Statement: Transform Boundaries are boundaries between plated that are slipping side by side.

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