Labs / Geography
Subduction Zone Machine
A cold oceanic plate dives beneath a continent, bending down into the mantle along an inclined slab. Change how fast the plates converge and how old & dense the slab is, then hover over the slab to read the earthquake depth. Watch the trench deepen, the quakes trace the slab, and water rising off it melt the mantle to build a chain of volcanoes.
Dip 26°Trench 6.0 kmArc 222 kmQuake @cursor —
What to try
- Make the slab old and dense (slide toward 180 Myr). Why does the dip get steeper, and what happens to the distance between the trench and the volcanoes?
- Compare the Cascadia and Marianas presets. Which one puts its volcanic arc far inland, and which crowds it near the coast?
- Hover down the line of earthquakes. How deep do they reach, and why do quakes stop happening below the bottom of the slab?
- Turn off Melt & water. If the slab released no water, would you still expect a volcanic arc to exist here?
- Crank up the convergence speed. Do earthquakes happen more often, and does a faster plate dive at a shallower or steeper angle?