An Experiment in Tectonics

[Karro]

It looks like you've just added an arrow to each plate. That's not really how things work. Plates don't move in one direction, they rotate with respect to a pole. This means the only motion you need to concern yourself with is the relative motion across each boundary. If plate A is moving west with respect to plate B, it is perfectly acceptable to say that plate A is going east with respect to plate C.
Velocity space analysis is a useful tool here.

-Rob

I'd noticed that plates tended to rotate rather than move in a particular uniform direction. I'm curious about this rotation, and what the center of this rotation is.

To your knowledge, are the plates essentially floating on the magma sea below the crusts? And do the magma seas flow along something resembling the coriolis effect? Understanding plate movements a little more thorougly would help in making this stuff a little more accurate (at least speaking for myself).

[HandsomeRob]

I'd noticed that plates tended to rotate rather than move in a particular uniform direction. I'm curious about this rotation, and what the center of this rotation is.

To your knowledge, are the plates essentially floating on the magma sea below the crusts? And do the magma seas flow along something resembling the coriolis effect? Understanding plate movements a little more thorougly would help in making this stuff a little more accurate (at least speaking for myself).

It's simpler than that, actually. Because plates are segments of a spherical shell moving about the surface of a sphere, their motion can only be described as rotation. The center of rotation for any plate can be any point on the earth's surface.

[Edward Protera]

The tutorial does simplify things a bit unrealistically, yes, but then again, most fractal terrain generators don't really even bother with tectonics, so something simple is better than nothing, I figure. ^^;