plate tectonics?
supposedly the earths crust moves.


why are the Hawaiian islands formed in a chain???

my teacher says its because there is a radioactive spot under it that actually melts a hole through the crust and spills out lava into the ocean, making a chain of islands as the crust moves

I thought they where old volcanoes and whatnot.

but how would that explain how it is forming into a chain of islands?

well this explains some of it
http://library.thinkquest.org/J003007/Disasters2/volcano/formed/formed.htm

If you look at google maps you can actually follow the movement of the pacific plate by that chain of islands. Hot spots are relatively immobile so they let you track the movement of plates if there's volcanic activity above them.

the islands are being formed by volcanoes, that is why they are continualy growing in size. they are formed where two of the plates join and that is where the weak spot is that allows the lava to rise up and form the volcano. that is why they call it the ring of fire.

This post was edited by goldfreek on Mar 30 2009 12:31pm

Radioactivity isn't the word you're looking for there....

but anyways, yes, the Earth's crust (outer shell) is formed by a group of plates that shift due to magma circulation underneath. When there is a "leak" or "crack" in the crust, the magma finds its way up -- and since magma is incredibly hot rock, it turns back into a solid when coming into contact with something that absorbs and retains A LOT of heat like water (to put it simply, lava = hot, water = cold, water is in much greater quantity and thus the lava cools down back into rock).

You honestly need to read this stuff up yourself, you always ask these kind of questions which makes me think you're a curious person -- so why not take advantage of your curiousity and actually look at the material in depth. You could learn so much more than what anyone can or is willing to type up on JSP.

so pretty much your saying to make more Hawaiian islands all we would need to do is crack a hole in the pacific plate so that it starts spewing out lava?

Well you make it sound like its an easy task -- but yes.

fake.