Sea Floor Magnetic Pattern

As long as the magnetic field remains constant the polarity stripe widens.

Sea floor magnetic pattern. The magnetism of mid ocean ridges helped scientists first identify the process of seafloor spreading in the early 20th century. At slow spreading ridges the anomalies are squeezed tighter together but the basic. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading. Basalt the once molten rock that makes up most new oceanic crust is a fairly magnetic substance and scientists began using magnetometers to measure the magnetism of the ocean floor in the 1950s what they discovered was that the magnetism of the ocean floor around.

Samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process. When the earth s magnetic field reverses a new stripe with the new polarity begins. These patterns of stripes provide the history of seafloor spreading. Geophysicists can read these patterns from the magnetic anomalies they measure with a magnetometer.

Magnetic evidence for seafloor spreading explains how magnetic polarity frozen into seafloor basalts reveals evidence for the creation of new seafloor at mid ocean ridges. Understanding patterns of sea floor magnetism 30 points a magnetometer is an instrument used to measure very small variations in the magnetic intensity of the upper part of the earth s crust magnetometers can be moved around on land usually by a person on foot used in the air towed beneath an aircraft or used at sea towed behind a ship. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be.