What are divergent boundaries?

Divergent boundaries are places where Earth’s pieces pull apart and move away from each other.

Imagine you have a piece of playdough, and you slowly pull it apart with your fingers. As you keep pulling, the middle starts to stretch and thin out, eventually, it might even split into two separate pieces. That’s kind of what happens at divergent boundaries, but instead of playdough, we’re talking about Earth's plates.

Think of Earth’s crust as a big, stretchy band. At a divergent boundary, this band is being pulled in opposite directions, like if you're tugging on either end of a rubber band with your hands. As the band stretches, it gets thinner and eventually breaks, forming a new edge on each side. This is why we see new landforms, like mid-ocean ridges, where lava rises up to fill in the gap.

Right down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a long mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It's exactly what happens when Earth's plates pull apart, it's like a giant playdough crack that keeps growing over time!