Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Seafloor Spreading Stripes
Fresh crust erupts at the mid-ocean ridge and creeps outward on both sides. Each time Earth's magnetic field flips, the cooling rock locks in the new direction — painting the same striped barcode on the left and right of the ridge. Hover anywhere on the seafloor to read how old that crust is.
Labs / Geography / Seafloor Spreading Stripes
Seafloor Spreading Stripes
Fresh crust erupts at the mid-ocean ridge and creeps outward on both sides. Each time Earth's magnetic field flips, the cooling rock locks in the new direction — painting the same striped barcode on the left and right of the ridge. Hover anywhere on the seafloor to read how old that crust is.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
oldest 5.6 Myrcursor —dist —field —
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Speed up the spreading rate. Why do the stripes get wider even though the field flips just as often?
- Two stripes sit the same distance from the ridge on opposite sides. Are they the same age? Why does that happen?
- Switch to “Real Earth”. Why are those stripes uneven instead of neatly spaced?
- Hover a stripe far from the ridge, then one nearby. How does distance from the ridge translate into age?
- Pause and shorten the reversal interval. How could geologists use stripe widths to measure how fast a plate once moved?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.