Answer:
There is a thing called a continental drift. It started about 200 million years ago. At first the continents were all attached, this super continent was called pangaea. Continental drift occurs because of the shift of the tectonic plates within the earth's outer shell. The heat from within the earth triggers movement to occur. This a very slow process though. It took 200 million years for the continents to get where the are now and would probably take another 200 to collide.
Answer: find the answer in the explanation.
Explanation:
From the experiment set up in the diagram, the pointer is resting on the drinking straw while the rod is resting on the drinking straw.
When the rod is being heated through the bursen burner, there will be linear expansion in the rod. As the rod increases its length, this causes the drinking straw to roll and thereby causing the pointer to rotate.
The pointer therefore rotates because of the thermer expansion that happen in the rod due to the heat from the bursen burner.
Given that the mass is m = 0.2 kg and the displacement is x = 3 cm = 0.03 m
We have to find the spring constant and potential energy.
The spring constant can be calculated by the formula

Here, k is the spring constant.
g = 9.8 m/s^2 is the acceleration due to gravity.
Substituting the values, the spring constant will be

The potential energy can be calculated as