Hawaiian island chain really need 1. do the islands appear to be the same age, or are they older at one end of the chain or another? explain what evidence supports your conclusion. 2. where are new volcanoes forming?3. what is the direction of the plate and how does this compare to the trend in direction of the island chain?4. based on these observations and what you have learned in the lessons, develop a hypothesis about how the hawaiian island chain is forming.

It is hypothesized that the Hawaiian Islands were, and still are forming, as a result of repeated volcanic eruptions that originate thousands of feet below the seafloor. The visible islands are the peaks of these volcanoes. Due to the movement of tectonic plates, which comprise the outer crust of the Earth’s surface, volcanoes are formed either where the plates meet or in the middle of the plate. In the case of the Hawaiian Island chain, it was formed by a hot spot in the middle of the Pacific Plate. As the plate moved over the “hot spot” lava flowed over several million years until the islands were formed as the tops of these volcanic mountains. Some of them rise over 30,000 feet above the seafloor. What we know as the Hawaiian Islands is only a small portion of the Hawaiian Ridge of the Emperor Seamount Chain. The chain is made up of over 80 large volcanoes. The Hawaiian Islands are a 1,500 mile long archipelago that reaches from Big Island of Hawaii in the southeast to the Kure Atoll in the northwest, which is comprised of 132 islands, atolls, shoals, and seamounts.

answer; /// i do believe that the correct answer is (d) majority vote as an approval requirement;