What is the difference between the hypothesis of continental drift and the theory of plate tectonics?

Answer 1

Long shore drift is the movement of material along a beach. The material would be washed onto the beach then another wave would pick it up and move it further down. This is how beaches can move along the coast line. This has nothing to do with plate tectonics.

Continental drift is related to plate tectonics. It is the movement of the continents by the plates underneath them and varies from 1cm to 15cm every year.

Millions of years ago the continents were all connected in a super continent called Pangaea until they were pushed apart by the plates underneath them.

Answer 2

Continental drift is the name of the theory of the earth from around 1925 by Alfred Wegener who suggested it based on the fit of the continental coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, later based on evidence of fossil correlations between southern Africa and South America, but not adopted overall as a

theory of geology.

Plate tectonics is the modern term used from the 1960's on after geophysicists learned the mechanism of sea-floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges and of earthquakes in the ocean trenches and were able to learn the facts about the

division of the globe into lithospheric plates created and

destroyed by the convecting asthenosphere, and were able

to adapt this model as a framework within which geologic

processes operate.

Answer 3

There is no difference, they are they same theory about the Earth's crust being divided and moving, they are just two different names that people call it.