Question

How does the heat flow and movement of material within Earth causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and creates mountains and ocean basins?

Answer 1

Heat flow and movement of material within the Earth causes geological features and disasters to form because all this movement is responsible for the motion of tectonic plates.

Explanation:

As previously stated, movement within the Earth causes tectonic plates to move (tectonic plates are pieces of Earth's crust and upper mantle; also referred as the lithosphere). In addition, this movement is what causes the many geological features and disasters written above.

Moreover, the way that this works is that convection currents in the mantle (inside the Earth) causes tectonic plates to move when material near the Earth's core rises, and colder mantle rock sinks. In addition, this movement allows for the creation of many geological features.

Here are some of them and a brief explanation of how they are formed:

1. Mid-ocean ridges are gaps between tectonic plates that mantle the Earth like seams on a baseball. Hot magma wells up at the ridges, forming new ocean crust and shoving the plates apart. Iceland is an example of volcanoes that form in association with sea floor spreading. A recent eruption in Iceland grounded air traffic for many days.

2. At subduction zones, two tectonic plates meet and one slides beneath the other back into the mantle, the layer underneath the crust. The cold, sinking plate pulls the crust behind it downward.
   Many spectacular volcanoes are found along subduction zones, such as the "Ring of Fire" that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. Earthquakes are also common as the slab of crust descends.

3. At a divergent margin, two plates are spreading apart, as in seafloor-spreading ridges or continental rift zones such as the East Africa Rift.

4. Transform margins mark slip-sliding plates, such as California's San Andreas Fault, where the North America and Pacific plates grind past each other with a mostly horizontal motion.
   This type of boundary mainly causes earthquakes

Here are some links that might explain more about this. Hope they help!

http://www.livescience.com/37706-what-is-plate-tectonics.html
http://www.trinity.edu/gkroeger/geos1304/notes/intro%20plate.htm