Continental drift Continental drift Continental drift is the theory that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, but his theory was rejected by many for lack of any motive mechanism. Arthur Holmes later proposed mantle convection for that mechanism. The idea of continental drift has since been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains that the continents
Stokes drift this drift in his 1847 study of water waves. The Stokes drift is the difference in end positions, after a predefined amount of time (usually one wave period), as derived from a description in the Lagrangian and Eulerian coordinates. The end position in the Lagrangian description is obtained by following a specific fluid parcel during the time interval. The corresponding end position in the Eulerian description is obtained by integrating the flow velocity at a fixed position—equal to the initial position in the Lagrangian description—during the same time interval. The Stokes drift velocity equals the Stokes drift divided by the