Please visit the location given, read the information below and do a little research perhaps. Then message me your answers to the questions below. You may log your find at the same time.
Please do not include answers or pictures of the rock face in your logs.
Your main task is to decide if you are looking at an anticline or a syncline and it’s not as easy as you might think.
Firstly you need to know how rock is formed.
A rock structure can be created in any rock type or combination:
· Sedimentary rocks are created by a variety of processes but usually involving deposition, grain by grain, layer by layer, in water or, in the case of terrestrial sediments, on land through the action of wind or sometimes moving ice. Erosion later exposes them in their current form.
· Metamorphic rocks are created by rocks that have been transformed into another kind of rock, usually by some combination of heat, pressure and chemical alteration.
· Igneous rocks are created when molten rock cools and solidifies, with or without crystallization. They may be either plutonic bodies or volcanic extrusives. Again, erosive forces sculpt their current forms.
Geologists have created a number of terms to describe different rock structures in the landscape that can be formed by natural processes:
Plate tectonics (from the Late Latin tectonicus, from the Greek: τεκτονικός "pertaining to building")] is a scientific theory that describes the large-scale motion of Earth's lithosphere. This theoretical model builds on the concept of continental drift which was developed during the first few decades of the 20th century. The geoscientific community accepted the theory after the concepts of seafloor spreading were later developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s
So why am I telling you this?
Well after the rock has been formed and as it is being moved about during plate tectonics, the rock strata is subjected to sideways pressure, like trying to push a piece of paper across a desk. The problem is, it’s like one end of the paper is attached to the desk and this creates ripples in the rock strata. These ripples are called either anticlines or synclines
In structural geology, a syncline is a fold with younger layers closer to the centre of the structure Synclines are typically a downward fold, (i.e. a trough), where an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core, (i.e. a mound)
At this location the rock layers are clearly at an angle, so they must be a syncline or an anticline, can you tell which is here?
You may need to take a step back and look at the strata of the surrounding rocks to try and get a picture of the larger area and so answer the question.
Questions
- Describe the structure of the rock face, concentrate on the layers not its texture
- Tell me is it a syncline or an anticline and tell me how you came to this conclusion
- Tell me the angle to the ground the rock strata is displaying.
If you feel willing and able please include a photo at the cache but do not include a large section of the rock face.
Please message the answers to me and feel free to log your find at the same time.
I hope you enjoyed the visit and didn’t find it too hard
Please do not visit at night; this is not an area I would encourage people to go to at night.