ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a basic grounding in the principles of geology and explains how to apply them. Mountains are a source of inspiration, places for recreation, and locations where the Earth's interior is exposed as it rarely is elsewhere. The chapter focuses on what are mountains, and how are they formed? What do they tell us about Earth processes? Mountains form slowly by the accumulation of small deformations over long periods of time. Earth's structure consists of an inner core, outer core, mantle, and crust. Magnetometers were developed in the 1830s to measure Earth's magnetic field. Plate tectonics is essentially the same concept as that expounded by Wegener and du Toit, but with an explanation for how the continents move. Mountain building, then, is a result of shortening by folding and faulting, of igneous intrusion and eruption, of uplift, and of extension.
