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Cross section of the crust and upper mantle

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Click on the image at the right

Cross section of the crust and upper mantle. The dark- and medium-brown represent the continental and oceanic crust, respectively, while the light brown is the upper part of the mantle. Arrows show the direction of movement. Click on the link below for a more detailed description.
From a Columbia U. course Web site of Prof. Paul Polson

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The crust
The outermost part of the earth, known also as the lithosphere, is broken up into plates that are supported by the underlying mantle, and are moved by the convective cells within the mantle at a rate of a few centimetres per year. New crust is formed where plates move away from each other under the oceans, and old crust is recycled back into the mantle as where plates moving in opposite directions collide.
This dynamic earth: the story of plate tectonics is an excellent, graphics -rich site maintained by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

Click on the image at the right to see an expanded map of the world's crustal plates from the USCGS site.
The oceanic crust
The parts of the crust that contain the world’s oceans are very different from the parts that form the continents. The continental crust is 10-70 km thick, while oceanic crust averages only 5-7 km in thickness. Oceanic crust is more dense (3.0-3.1 g cm^–3) and therefore “floats” on the mantle at a greater depth than does continental crust (density 2.7-2.8 ). Finally, oceanic crust is much younger; the oldest oceanic crust is about 200 million years old, while the most ancient continental rocks were formed 3.8 billion years ago.

New crust is formed from molten material in the upper mantle at the divergent boundaries that exist at undersea ridges. The melting is due to the rise in temperature associated with the nearly adiabatic decompression of the upper 50-70 km of mantle material as separation of the plates reduces the pressure below. The molten material collects in a magma pocket which is gradually exuded in undersea lava flows. The solidified lava is transformed into crust by the effects of heat and the action of seawater which selectively dissolves the more soluble components.

Plate collisions

An animated view of seafloor spreading can be seen at the PBS site Mountain maker, earth shaker, which has a lot of good stuff on plate tectonics.

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Where two plates collide, one generally plunges under the other and returns to the mantle in a process known as subduction. Since the continental plates have a lower density, they tend to float above the oceanic plates and resist subduction. At continental boundaries such as that of the North American west coast where an oceanic plate pushes under the continental crust, oceanic sediments may be sheared off, resulting in a low coastal mountain range (see here for a nice animation of this process.) Also, the injection of water into the subducting material lowers its melting point, resulting in the formation of shallow magma pockets and volcanic activity. Divergent plate boundaries can cross continents, however; temporary divergences create rift valleys such as the Rhine and Rio Grande, while permanent ones eventually lead to new oceanic basins.

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