GEOL 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Metamorphic Rock, Continental Crust, Overburden Pressure

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Geology
• Course: GEOL 100
• Professor: Centorbi

Document Summary

Force: a push or a pull that causes, or tends to cause, change in the motion of a mass. Expressed as the amount of acceleration experienced by a mass. Stress: the amount of forces divided by the area upon which the force is applied. Confining pressure: when the force imposed on the rock is the same amount from all directions. Water in the pore spaces of the rock exerts a fluid pressure that pushes outward in all direction, opposes the inward-directed confining pressure on the rock. Differential stress: what deforms a rock, when the amount of combined stress is greater in some directions than others. If the imposed stress exceeds the strength of the rock, the rock fails structurally, by fracturing, folding, or flowing as a weak solid. The strength of continental crust varies as a function of depth because temperature and pressure both increase downward. Brittle deformation: fracturing at shallow levels of the crust.