Explain Why Ocean Floor Plates Subduct Beneath Continental Plates

The plates collide to form a volcanic mountain because the oceanic plate will subduct under the continiental plate and melt.

Explain why ocean floor plates subduct beneath continental plates.

Or the colliding plates may form a trench. As it moves away from the ridge it cools. Oceanic lithosphere is formed hot and thin at mid ocean ridges and grows thick as more rock hardens underneath it. The average density of the oceanic crust is 3g cm 3 while the average.

Because oceanic crust cools as it ages it eventually becomes denser than the underlying asthenosphere and so it has a tendency to subduct or dive under adjacent continental plates or younger sections of oceanic crust. When two oceanic plates meet the older plate subducts. If the subduction occurs between two oceanic plates it is the older plate that will move underneath the younger tectonic plate. When oceanic lithospheremeets continental lithosphere the continent always stays on top while the oceanic plate subducts.

Geologists explain that subduction occurs to oceanic plates because they are denser and cooler than continental plates. Two parallel mountain ranges commonly develop above such a subduction zone a coastal range consisting of sedimentary strata and hard rock lifted out of the sea accretionary wedge and a volcanic range farther inland volcanic arc.