Move your continent, explore changing plate boundaries, and discover the processes that reshape planets like Earth.

👉Teacher Resources

CONTINENTAL ACCRETION

Continents can grow when fragments of crust, such as island arcs or small continental blocks, collide with their edges. These fragments can become attached as tectonic plates converge, a process called continental accretion.

HOT-SPOT VOLCANISM

Some volcanoes form above unusually hot mantle regions called hot spots. Rising mantle material can partially melt, supplying magma that reaches the surface. As a tectonic plate moves over a long-lived hot spot, successive volcanoes can form a chain, as in Hawaii.

DIVERGENT BOUNDARIES

At divergent boundaries, tectonic plates move apart. On land, stretching can create a rift valley, while in oceans, spreading builds oceanic crust along mid-ocean ridges. Over time, rifting can split a continent and open a new ocean basin.

TRANSFORM BOUNDARIES

At transform boundaries, tectonic plates slide horizontally past one another. This side-to-side movement occurs along strike-slip faults, where rocks on opposite sides move mainly parallel to the fault and built-up stress can be released as earthquakes.

CONVERGENT BOUNDARIES

At convergent boundaries, tectonic plates move toward one another. Dense oceanic crust can descend beneath another plate in a process called subduction, creating earthquakes and volcanoes. When buoyant continental crust collides, it can shorten and thicken into mountain ranges over millions of years.

IMPACT EVENTS

Fast-moving asteroids or comets can excavate huge craters when they strike a planet. A raised rim and minerals altered by extreme shock pressure can help geologists identify an ancient impact site.

ICE AGES

During an ice age, large ice sheets persist on land, expanding during colder glacial periods and retreating during warmer interglacial periods. As glaciers move, they erode the landscape, carving valleys and reshaping mountains. Growing ice sheets store water on land and lower global sea level; when that land ice melts, sea level rises again.

SUPERCONTINENTS

A supercontinent forms when plate motions bring most of Earth’s continental land together. Matching rocks, fossils, and mountain belts on separate continents preserve evidence of those former connections. Over geologic time, continents have repeatedly assembled and broken apart.

WHAT WE GET WRONG

We've taken a lot of artistic license with how continents move, to make the simulation more playable and enjoyable. In the real world, continents move as parts of tectonic plates, which include Earth’s crust and rigid uppermost mantle. Plate motion involves forces such as slab-pull at subduction zones and ridge-push away from mid-ocean ridges, as part of Earth’s mantle-convection system. Plates don't want to form supercontinents, or anything else; they are simply moved by geologic processes over geologic time. Still, we hope you've had fun exploring some of these processes and playing our game.

AI ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project grew from extensive collaboration between classroom students, their teacher, and vibe-coding tools, with AI generating substantial portions of the code, illustrations, and educational text through repeated human direction and revision. Using AI does not remove our responsibility to verify accuracy, understand the material, and take responsibility for what we share. Academic honesty means following your teacher’s guidelines, always acknowledging AI assistance whenever we use it, and never presenting AI-generated work as entirely our own.

Educational Use and DisclaimerThis simulation is a simplified educational model and does not reproduce every aspect of real-world geology. The website, software, and accompanying materials are provided “as is,” without warranties regarding accuracy, availability, or fitness for a particular purpose. Third-party components remain subject to their respective licenses.

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