Lecture 5:

Plate tectonics: The surface crust is quite rigid, but is broken

into a number of plates which are free to move over the
mantle.

About 75% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans, each of

which is underlain by one or more plates. The continents are
land masses, predominately above sea level, which are also
comprised of one or more plates. The motions of the plates
relative to each other is called plate tectonics.

The crust is also called the lithosphere and the upper part of
the mantle is called the asthenosphere.

There are thus three types of plate boundary, namely the

divergent boundary (the mid-ocean rift), the shear boundaries
(where plates slip past each other), and the convergent
boundary (where two plates collide, with one usually being
subducted and consumed).

Folds:

A geosyncline is a long prism of rock laid down on a subsiding region of

the earth's crust. Geosynclines are fundamental geologic units. The
geosyncline is formed of sedimentary rock deposited under the sea
parallel to the coastline, and continues to grow in thickness as long as
subsidence continues

Faults:
Faults are fractures in crustal strata along which rocks have been
displaced (Fig. ). The amount of displacement may vary from only a
few tens of millimeters to several hundred kilometers.
In many faults, the fracture is a clean break; in others, the
displacement is not restricted to a simple fracture, but is developed
throughout a fault zone.
Classification of Faults
based on the direction in which movement took place along the fault
plane