Movement of Earth’s tectonic plates reshapes the crust by pushing, pulling, and sliding at plate boundaries. This activity builds mountains where plates collide, creates deep ocean trenches where one plate sinks beneath another, and forms mid‑ocean ridges as new crust rises. It also sculpts continental rifts and other surface features, showing how plate motion directly shapes what we see on the Earth’s surface. Meteor impacts come from space and aren’t caused by plate movement, and plate dynamics affect both continents and ocean basins, not just one aspect of surface topography. So the statement that best describes the effect is that tectonic plate movement shapes crustal features on the surface of the Earth.

Think about how long it takes for the Moon to go through all its phases and line up with the Sun and Earth in the same way again. That repeating pattern, called the synodic month, is about 29.5 days (roughly 29.53 days). The reason it’s longer than the Moon’s orbital time relative to the stars (about 27.3 days) is that Earth is also moving around the Sun, so the Moon has to travel a bit more to reach the same phase relative to the Sun. The other options describe unrelated timescales: a year, a week, and a half-day. So the Moon cycle lasts about 29.5 days.

Coastlines that line up across oceans show that the continents were once joined. When you match the edges of continents, like the eastern edge of South America with the western edge of Africa, they fit together like puzzle pieces. That visual fit points to a time when these lands were part of a single large landmass that later split apart as the tectonic plates moved. This observation is supported by other lines of evidence, such as similar rock types and fossil species found on now-distant continents, which reinforce the idea of a shared, ancient connection. But the coastline alignment is the most direct and intuitive signal that the pieces of the continents were once one continuous surface. Other ideas, like desert climate patterns, mountain ranges appearing across continents, or the same dinosaur species on different continents, don’t demonstrate a past global connection as clearly and can arise from unrelated processes.

Tides are driven by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun on Earth's oceans. When their gravitational forces line up in the same direction relative to Earth, they reinforce each other and push the ocean bulges higher and create stronger tides. This happens when the Sun, Moon, and Earth lie in a straight line, which occurs during a new moon (Moon between Sun and Earth) and a full moon (Earth between Sun and Moon). Those alignments produce spring tides—larger high tides and lower low tides. When the Sun and Moon are at right angles relative to Earth (the quarters), their pulls partially cancel, giving smaller tides called neap tides.