Many are the times that we wake up and go about our day to day activities without taking a moment to understand our natural and physical surroundings. By their beauty, we acknowledge their magnificence and quite often, our trail of thoughts ends there. It is because of the unanswered questions that we might have that we have geologists. People who can easily explain some of these phenomena that we might deem hard to comprehend.
The study of the processes that take part in the Earth, its structures and also the minerals that arise from some of this processes is called geology. Through the study of geology, we can clearly fathom why the earth is as it is, what geological processes took place a long time ago, the structures that arose from them and it has helped us to be able to make future geological predictions.
It is quite clear that most of the physical structures that we regard so highly were formed because of a tectonic plate force or as a result of some of this forces. The majestic valleys that we have such as the African Great Rift Valley, were formed as a result of tensional forces in opposite direction, that acted upon the earth's plates causing a large amount of stress on the land and as a consequence, unbearable stress was experienced along the fault lines that had formed within the earth’s surface and eventually, it led to the “sinking” of the earth. The tensional forces acting on the plate tectonics might act towards each other and if they are strong enough, will lead to features referred to as Fold Mountains (David Darling par. 1-2).
According to National Geographic, although most of the geological processes have already taken place, we still have some that are perennial example coal formation. The much that we can do is sit back and enjoy the marvels of nature such as the Rift Valley.
Works cited
David Darling. Rift valley. n.d. Accessed (20th June 2015) http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/rift_valley.html.
