It is also said that he thought that the rectangular chambers looked like the cells in some monasteries. Physically cells always have a boundary membrane, a little like a polythene bag encloses contents within it. Inside the space limited by the membrane there is an remarkable chemical processing unit.
Iceland is a place where, because of large amounts of lava extrusion, the ocean floor is, in effect, above sea level, making it easy to study ocean floor spreading. You can affix strain gauges on many parts of the spreading ridge. 6 people found this useful.
At the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (and other places), material from the upper mantle rises through the faults between oceanic plates. It forms new crust as the plates move away from each other. The new crust then slowly moves away from the ridge. Seafloor spreading helps explain continental drift in plate tectonics. Earlier theories (e.g. by Alfred Wegener) of continental drift were that continents 'plowed' through the ocean. The modern idea is that the ocean floor itself moves and carries the continents with it as it expands from a mid-ocean ridge.