Mid-Atlantic Ridge

                I did it! I climbed to the top of K2!!! (I attached a video for you.) After weeks of grueling climbing up icy cliffs and hiking through snow and ice, I have finally made it back down. We all divided the task (well we planned to but the only thing I could do was cook..) and I cooked while Lucy and Nolan did everything else. As you know I’m not the best cook, so we were all happy to come back down and eat a hamburger.  Oh and on the way up Nolan fell into a crevice! (Better him than me.) He dangled for four minutes before we noticed him! Luckily Lucy had us all attached by a belay system so we pulled him up and out and went on hiking. You would have loved the whole experience, it was absolutely amazing to see the rest of the Himalayans from K2 in person, and had always been a dream of mine. Anyways, when we got back to the bottom (via helicopter, man were we tired!) I found a note waiting for me  telling me to prepare for more hiking….. but in a wetsuit! Well I needed it because we headed (after a few days of resting up) to the Mid-Atlantic ridge! (38.4667° N, 28.4000° W) While I didn’t get much of a chance to use that wetsuit (I was in a submarine) I got to drive around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge! We drove around seeing all kinds of sea life (mostly tubeworms)!
 
I never knew the ocean was so deep and I only saw the top layer of it. It was incredible! After I drove around for a while, I drove too close to an active underwater volcano and they had to stop me…. Anyways while we were down there gazing at the sea, Lucy and Nolan told me all about it.  The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (duh).  It is a chain of active and inactive volcanoes on the divergent boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. A divergent boundary is where the two plates move apart ß plate     plateà    creating rifts (cracks) in the Oceanic crust the magma comes up to fill that then creates land masses underwater.  This is what happened at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There are underwater volcanoes here because the magma is coming up through the rifts. The magma is pushed upwards through a convection current. There are many earthquakes here because the plates are shifting apart. There are rifts and currently active and inactive volcanoes. Recent activity that was recorded was the inflation of the Katla volcano in 2004. Here is a map of the historical frequency of earthquakes (plate movement) at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from 2010-2011:

                Something else really cool I learned was that the rocks produced on the Mid-Atlantic ridge is proof that our magnetic field switched a long time ago. The rocks contain Basalt which is magnetic. As the rocks become solid they align to the earth’s magnetic field and face the North Pole.  

Because some of the rocks are facing the other way, it proves that the magnetic field reversed a long time ago. After investigating around a bit more it was time to come p and when we did I found a note in a bottle waiting for me!  It said “Get ready to hit the beach! Put on your bikini and head to the west coast!” Seeing as Washington is so dismal and rainy right now I suspect I’m headed to California! Seems like everyplace I have been is a tectonic plate boundary zone, so I suspect we are headed to San Andreas Fault Zone! Bye for now!

Cami

Divergent Boundary pic: http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/msese/earthsysflr/plates3.html

Mid-Atlantic Ridge pic: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/scientists-find/

Historical frequency pic: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_earthchanges49.htm