01← →
Divergent
Extension · rifting · seafloor spreading
Plates move apart. Mantle material rises, decompression melting can generate magma, and new lithosphere may form along spreading centers.
Rock · tectonics · surface process · deep time
Geology
Geology reconstructs a dynamic planet from incomplete evidence. Rocks transform, plates move, landscapes erode, magma rises, sediments accumulate, and the record is buried, deformed, recycled, and exposed again across timescales far longer than direct observation.
Planetary process
Geology connects material cycles to a moving lithosphere.
Plate motion changes pressure, temperature, elevation, basin geometry, magma generation, erosion, burial, and exposure. The rock cycle and plate tectonics are two views of the same evolving Earth.
02→ ←
Convergent
Subduction · collision · mountain building
Plates approach one another. Outcomes depend on lithosphere type and density, producing trenches, volcanic arcs, crustal shortening, or continental collision.
03⇄
Transform
Strike-slip motion · earthquakes
Plates slide laterally past one another. Lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed at the boundary, but strain can accumulate and release suddenly.
Rock transformation network
The rock cycle is a network, not a conveyor belt.
A rock does not have to march through one fixed sequence. Burial, uplift, weathering, heating, melting, crystallization, deposition, and fluid interaction open many possible pathways depending on environment and tectonic history.
Selected material
Igneous rock
Crystallized from melt
Available transformations
3
Choose a process
Real pathways operate across very different timescales and can reverse, branch, stall, or repeat. This lab represents material transformations, not a mandatory chronology.
Deep-time ruler
Different geologic processes become visible at different clocks.
Seconds → years
Earthquakes, eruptions, landslides, floods, weathering events, and human-observed deformation.
Thousands → millions of years
River incision, sedimentary basin filling, mountain erosion, fault displacement, glaciation, and landscape evolution.
Tens → hundreds of millions of years
Ocean basins open and close, supercontinents assemble and break apart, mountain belts rise and erode, and crust is recycled.
Billions of years
Continental crust evolves, atmosphere and oceans change, and the geologic record preserves only fragments of Earth's earliest history.