11.1 Why is Hawaii in the Middle of the Pacific
and 2000 Miles Away From
the Nearest Land?
The video at the end of this lesson about the origin of Hawaii is a great video because it teaches us the history of discovery of how Hawaii came to be. This is how science should be taught. It is ironic that it took the history channel to create one of the best science videos.
Prior to watching this video it is important to understand the structure of our planet earth. Earth is made of solid plates of crust that float on molten rock. Here is a diagram of the structure of the earth.
Here is a map of the plates that make up the surface of the earth.
Plates move either toward other plates or apart from them. If they move apart molten rock or magma fills in the widening crack and sometimes emerges as volcanoes. This is happening in the Atlantic ocean and created the mid-Atlantic ridge and the island of Iceland. That is why Iceland is known as the island of fire and ice. Here is a picture below of Iceland (captured by @bsteinbekk).
In cases where they move together one plate slides under the other creating deep trenches. It also creates a lot of pressure and sometimes forces molton rock to rise and form volcanoes. This process created a series of volcanoes around the Pacific ocean called the ring of fire.
There is what was until recently a big mystery in the middle of the Pacific ocean, the volcanoes of Hawaii. They shouldn't be there because they are not at the edges of any continental plate. The story of how that mystery was solved is shown in the video below.
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We all know that the earth is round but how do we know that? The earth looks flat. Most people used to think the earth was flat in fact even today there are people who do.
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