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"Plate tectonics" refers to the process by which the plates move, combining stress, thermal expansion, melting, subduction, rifting, and faulting. Tectonics is from the Latin word for "building" and the various continental plates are called "tectonic plates" because they are built from magma and manipulated by the flow of hot, fluid rock beneath them.

The points at which plates intersect are called boundaries. Along these are various faults, which are discontinuities caused by the complex motion of subsurface rock.

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