Science & TechHow it works
How continents move as fast as your fingernails grow.
Earth's crust is broken into seven large and many smaller plates floating on the slowly flowing mantle. Heat from Earth's interior drives them, mostly at 2 to 10 centimeters a year. Where plates pull apart, new seafloor forms; where they collide, mountains like the Himalayas fold up or the ground shakes.
Useful: Europe and America drift about 2.5 centimeters apart each year: roughly two meters in your lifetime.
Source: en.wikipedia.org