California's Geologic Features

Examples of California's Geologic features are the San Andreas Fault, Mt. Shasta, Medicine Lake, and Lassen Park. The San Andread Fault was made by transform boundaries, which is when two tectonic, or lithospheric,  plates slide past each other.  A fault is the area that is between two plates.  In San Andreas' case, it is between the Pacific and North American Plates.  Mt. Shasta, Medicine Lake, and Lassen Park are all volcanoes, and were formed by subduction, which is when one plate goes over another one, pushing the other down into the mantle.

Plate Tectonics?

What are Plate Tectonics?
It was a theory, that the Earth's crust, was made out of large and small plates, that float on top of the lava underneath. Now, we know it is not just a theory, and it is the truth. That is now called Plate Tectonics. It has been discovered, that when the plates crashed together, that it is what causes earthquakes and mountains to form. When they move apart, they can create valleys. Those two features are called Convergent and Divergent Boundaries, respectively. The plates themselves move very slowly, 1 cm every year caused by convection currents. They are also moving the continents slowly together, so in a few thousand or million years, we might have a Pangaea again, the prehistoric super continent.