Suppose you are studying the motion of one of Earth's plates. What units would you probabiy use to describe its speed?

1 Answer
Geoearth
Dec 7, 2015

Cm/yr (centimeters per year)

Explanation:

The plates move at about the same rate as your fingernails grow. So using cm/yr is an appropriate scale. Not all plates move at the same speed too, currently the fastest moving tectonic plate on earth is the Indo-Australian plate moving at about 6cm/yr. We can measure this via satellite measurements and GPS.

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