Plate Boundaries are the locations at which 2 or more plates meet and interact. The motor behind their interactions comes from convection currents in the Mantle.

At a Convergent Boundary, tectonic plates converge or push into each other. There are locations at which 2 continental plates converge, forming large mountain ranges and causing earthquakes. The most well known is located between India and Asia, evident by the Himalayan Mountains. There are locations at which an oceanic plate converges and subducts underneath a continental plate. This is called a Subduction Zone and it creates deep ocean trenches and volcanic mountain ranges along the coast. An example of this would be the Peru-Chile trench along the coast of South America and its corresponding Andes Mountains. There are also locations at which 2 oceanic plates converge, creating chains of volcanic islands and a deep trench. An example of this would be the Indonesia island chains in the South Pacific. The islands are volcanic and very seismically active, experiencing earthquakes frequently.

Some Convergent locations include the Washington-Oregon coastline in the U.S., the coasts of China and Japan, and at the majority of mountain ranges on Earth such as the Alps in Europe, the Pontiac Mountains in Turkey, and Zagros Mountains in Iran. The Urals and Appalachian mountains are ancient convergences that are not active.

At a Divergent Boundary, tectonic plates are pulled apart from each other. This is usually a result of plates subducting on the other side, as they sink into the mantle, they pull the plate across. The separating plates allow magma to rise to the surface and harden into new crust. The processes of subduction and divergence ensure the planet stays the same size, despite the creation of new crust at Divergent boundaries. As one side of the plate is destroyed through melting, the other side grows.

There are only a few Divergent Boundaries - one runs through the middle of the Atlantic ocean and Iceland creating the Mid-Atlantic Ridge while the another runs inland along the west coast of Africa creating the Rift Valley. Ridges and rifts are landforms similar to canyons in shape.

The process of creating new crust is called Seafloor Spreading. It was discovered by Harry Hess through sonar readings. He found that the youngest rocks were close to the ridge while the rocks close to the coasts were much older. This proved that the boundary slowly pulls apart, pushing continents further apart and increasing the size of the Atlantic. Eventually, the Pacific will shrink as the Atlantic takes over as the largest ocean.

A Transform Boundary is similar to but not the same as a Strike-slip Fault. The well known San Andreas Fault in California is a strike-slip, but it is so large it is often also considered a Transform boundary. At Transform locations, the tectonic plates slide past each other in opposite directions. There are no true landforms created by these boundaries, though they can be seen as scar-like marks.

Though Transform Boundaries produce no volcanic activity, they are very seismically active and cause frequent earthquakes. As the pieces of crust grind past each other their rough nature causes them to catch and get stuck. Once enough pressure builds up to break the rocks the plates are stuck on, the plate slips and the corresponding jerk movement causes an earthquake. Current data shows that transform boundaries have more frequent small quakes as opposed to the less frequent but more massive quakes caused by Convergent boundaries.

Though similar in movement, the strike-slip is a fault slightly different from the Transform. A strike-slip is a localized event of an area, not reaching all the way through the lithosphere. A Transform boundary is truly 2 separate plates of the lithosphere grinding past each other.