The Hawaiian Hot Spot125 points totalIntroduction: Review the text on hot spot volcanism and recall that hotspots produce a string ofdormant volcanoes behind an active volcano. Because we know the age of the volcanoes and theirdistance from the hot spot we can use the dormant volcanoes produced by a hot spot todetermine the speed and direction that a tectonic plate is moving. This exercise will guide youthrough that process.There are a couple of different ways to do this. One would be to recognize that if a dormantvolcano is 5 million years old and is sitting 450 km from a hot spot then it has moved 450 km in 5million years. If we divide 450 by 5 we get 90 km/Ma. That unit is kilometers per million years(Ma is an abbreviation for millions of years). This is not a particularly useful unit. A million yearsis a very long time so it's difficult to really understand how fast a speed given in km/Ma really is.For most of what we do, we measure speeds in miles per hour. You know how long and hour isand you know how far a mile is so it's a useful unit. For Plate tectonic velocities it's best tomeasure the speed in centimeters per year (cm/yr). Doing this gives a number usually between 5and 15 or so which is a very useful and manageable unit. Since there are 100,000 centimeters in akilometer converting from km/Ma to cm/yr is relatively easy: divide my 10. So 90 km/Ma is 9.0cm/yr.Speed of Movement of the Pacific PlateUse the map below to figure out how fast the Pacif ...
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