Fold mountain facts for kids
Fold mountains are huge mountains that form when parts of the Earth's outer layer, called the crust, get squeezed and pushed together. Imagine pushing a rug across a floor – it wrinkles up. That's similar to how these mountains form! They are created by the powerful forces of plate tectonics.
How Fold Mountains Form
Fold mountains usually appear where two of Earth's giant tectonic plates crash into each other. Think of these plates as huge pieces of a puzzle that make up Earth's surface. When these plates move towards each other, especially when continents collide, the layers of rock between them get squashed.
This squeezing force makes the rock layers bend and fold. It's like pushing a tablecloth on a table; it crumples up. This happens a lot when there's a soft layer of rock, like salt, underneath.
When rocks fold, they create two main shapes:
- Anticlines are the parts that fold upwards, like a hill.
- Synclines are the parts that fold downwards, like a valley.
The Earth's crust is much thicker under mountains. This is because the heavy mountains push down, and the lighter crust floats deeper into the mantle below. This balance helps the mountains stay up. Fold mountains are usually much longer than they are wide.
Examples of Fold Mountains
Many famous mountain ranges around the world are fold mountains. Here are a few examples:
- The Jura mountains in Europe. These mountains formed from folding over a layer of salt.
- The Zagros Mountains in Iran. These are a series of long, dome-shaped folds.
- The Akwapim-Togo ranges in Ghana, Africa.
- The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians in the eastern United States.
- The Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas and Oklahoma, also in the United States.
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