Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The study of the earth's structural features.
- noun The art or science of construction, especially of large buildings.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Building, or any assembling of materials in construction, considered as an art: sometimes restricted to the shaping and ornamentation of furniture, cups, and weapons, including the different processes of inlaying, embossing, application, casting, soldering, etc.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The science, or the art, by which implements, vessels, dwellings, or other edifices, are constructed, both agreeably to the end for which they are designed, and in conformity with artistic sentiments and ideas.
- noun (Geol. & Phys. Geog.) the branch of geology concerned with the rock structures and external forms resulting from the deformation of the earth's crust; also, similar studies of other planets. Also called
structural geology . - noun a geological theory which considers the earth's crust as divided into a number of large relatively rigid plates, which move relatively independently on the more plastic asthenosphere under the influence of magmatic upwellings, so as to drift apart, slide past, or collide with each other, causing the formation, breakup, or merging of continents, and causing volcanism, the building of mountain ranges, and the subduction of one plate beneath another. In recent decades a large body of data have accumulated to support the theory and provide some details of the mechanisms at work. One set of supporting observations consists of data showing that the continents have slowly moved relative to each other over long periods of time, a phenomenon called
continental drift . Africa and South America, for example, have apparently moved apart from a connected configuration at about 2 to 3 cm per year over tens of millions of years.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun geology The study of
crustal plates and other large-scale structural features of the Earth. - noun architecture The science and art of
assembling ,shaping , orornamenting materials in construction.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the branch of geology studying the folding and faulting of the earth's crust
- noun the science of architecture
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tectonics.
Examples
-
Next up, wingnuts claiming that plate tectonics is a hoax.
Think Progress » Limbaugh: Volcanic eruption in Iceland is God’s reaction to health care’s passage. 2010
-
Plate tectonics is also responsible for creating the “pressure cooker” that slowly matures the organics into oil and gas.
-
“Next up, wingnuts claiming that plate tectonics is a hoax.”
Think Progress » Limbaugh: Volcanic eruption in Iceland is God’s reaction to health care’s passage. 2010
-
I gave you an article by a professor, a top expert on this subject, which clearly states that plate tectonics is THE KEY REASON why oil and gas deposits are found in four areas including deserts and arctic areas.
-
Since tectonics is literally at the root of architecture (archi-tektonike), this dual mode of operation is also at the core of architecture.
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008
-
I think it’s important to remember when looking at stuff like this that even among scientists there isn’t instant acceptance of ideas now taken for granted: plate tectonics is now the broadly-accepted theory that it is basically because its naysayers have all died off.
-
Dr. Chu gently reminded Barton of this little thing we call plate tectonics aka the Contintental Drift Theory.
-
Its the shape of the penninsula, the tectonics, that is interesting.
-
"We show that this occurred because of limited melting of the asteroid, and thus illustrate that the formation of andesite crust has occurred in our solar system by processes other than plate tectonics, which is the generally accepted process that created the crust of Earth."
-
"We show that this occurred because of limited melting of the asteroid, and thus illustrate that the formation of andesite crust has occurred in our solar system by processes other than plate tectonics, which is the generally accepted process that created the crust of Earth."
Earth News, Earth Science, Energy Technology, Environment News 2009
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.