ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Growth fault

Hey there little buddy! So a growth fault is kind of like a crack in the Earth's surface that happens when the plates that make up the Earth move past each other.

It's kind of like when you're stacking blocks and one block gets pushed a little bit to the side, making the tower uneven. Sometimes the blocks might even break a little bit because of the uneven pressure. The Earth's plates work kind of the same way, and sometimes they move apart or next to each other in a way that causes a crack or a fault in the surface.

These cracks are called growth faults because they happen slowly over time as the Earth's plates shift and move. Eventually, these faults can become really big and cause earthquakes or other natural disasters.

Scientists study these faults to try to understand how they work and how we can predict when they might cause problems. So in a way, growth faults are like puzzle pieces that help us understand more about our planet and how it works.