News of scientific discovery travels quickly in our "fast paced world", but it seems as though that full comprehension of what the news really means of lags far behind. I've noticed that many stories of science in general are affected in this some way. Some stories, like the atomic bomb were instant common knowledge, but most people still don't really understand how the atom is split.
The theory of plate tectonics is another example, which started in its current form in the late 1950`s and early 1960`s. Most people know the basics of the theory of plate tectonics, but the details are elusive.
In this essay I intend to tell the geological history of the plate tectonic development of the Great Lakes region in order to show how geology works in simple terms. I hope in showing important processes, and important changes in those processes, a synthesis will begin within the reader with respect to the development of tectonics of the Earth. With this synthesis I also hope to answer some basic introductory questions students need to ask, but don't know enough yet to know how.
The Great Lakes regions long and complex geologic history combines many of these details of how plate tectonics works. The area has been worked and reworked geologically for eons. This web page will be concentrating on the tectonic developments of the first 80% of the Earth's history of the Great Lakes region, from about four and a half billion years, till around a billion years ago.
The importance in understanding Earth's history is that we see a lot of processes that haven't really changed much over time. This is one of the basic ideas in geology called the theory of uniformatarinism. It says what is going on geologically now, went on in the past, and will continue into the future. When we assume this, we can put together lots of little bits of information to create a larger picture than we can see.
So what I hope you get from this project is a better picture of how the continents have developed over time, and the natural processes involved.