Continental Drift

Hello. I am a secret, slow-motion wiggle that the whole world does. Have you ever looked at a map? If you look closely at the big pieces of land, called continents, they look like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The pointy part of one piece, South America, looks like it could snuggle right into the cozy corner of another piece, Africa. That's me. I am the reason they fit together. I am the Earth's big, slow dance.

For a long, long time, nobody knew about my secret dance. Then, more than 100 years ago, around the year 1912, a man named Alfred Wegener looked at his maps and saw the puzzle, too. He wondered if all the land was once one big piece, like one giant cookie before it's broken apart. He was very curious, so he looked for clues. He found the same kinds of old rocks and sleepy animal fossils on different puzzle pieces, even though they were far apart with big oceans between them. It was like finding one half of a toy in your house and the other half in your friend's house across the street. He was so excited. He gave me my name: Continental Drift. At first, many people didn't believe him. They thought, 'How could a whole continent move?'. But Alfred knew he was onto something amazing.

It turns out, Alfred was right. The continents are still drifting today, moving just a tiny bit each year—about as fast as your fingernails grow. It's so slow you can't feel it, but I'm always at work, pushing and pulling the land. My slow dance makes mountains grow taller and oceans get wider over a very, very long time. I show everyone that our world is always changing and full of incredible surprises, reminding us that even the biggest things can move and make something new. I am the Earth's wonderful, wiggling secret.