What is a fault caused by a pulling apart force?
Tensional stress, meaning rocks pulling apart from each other, creates a normal fault. With normal faults, the hanging wall and footwall are pulled apart from each other, and the hanging wall drops down relative to the footwall.
What type of fault describes plates that are pulling apart?
A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. Along these boundaries, earthquakes are common and magma (molten rock) rises from the Earth’s mantle to the surface, solidifying to create new oceanic crust. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is an example of divergent plate boundaries.
What is a slip fault?
Strike-slip faults are vertical (or nearly vertical) fractures where the blocks have mostly moved horizontally. If the block opposite an observer looking across the fault moves to the right, the slip style is termed right lateral; if the block moves to the left, the motion is termed left lateral.
Is a type of fault?
A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock. Faults which move horizontally are known as strike-slip faults and are classified as either right-lateral or left-lateral. Faults which show both dip-slip and strike-slip motion are known as oblique-slip faults.
What kind of movement can occur along a fault?
Types of movement of crustal blocks that can occur along faults during an earthquake: 1. Where the crust is being pulled apart, normal faulting occurs, in which the overlying (hanging-wall) block moves down with respect to the lower (foot wall) block.
What are the different types of crustal faults?
2. Where the crust is being compressed, reverse faulting occurs, in which the hanging-wall block moves up and over the footwall block – reverse slip on a gently inclined plane is referred to as thrust faulting. 3. Crustal blocks may also move sideways past each other, usually along nearly-vertical faults.
How long does it take for a fault to form?
A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock. Faults allow the blocks to move relative to each other. This movement may occur rapidly, in the form of an earthquake – or may occur slowly, in the form of creep . Faults may range in length from a few millimeters to thousands of kilometers.
What kind of fault occurs on a gently inclined plane?
Where the crust is being compressed, reverse faulting occurs, in which the hanging-wall block moves up and over the footwall block – reverse slip on a gently inclined plane is referred to as thrust faulting.