Mountain building

Have you ever played with Play-Doh and made a little mountain on top of a flat surface? Well, some grown-ups call that a model of mountain building in real life!

Picture the earth like a big ball made of layers, kind of like a gobstopper candy. These layers include stuff like dirt, rocks, and even molten lava. Sometimes, the inside of the earth is very active and can cause some of these layers to move.

When two of these layers suddenly push against each other, it's kind of like you pushing your fists together. The layers start to crumple and fold, kind of like how your fists wrinkle up. These wrinkles and folds start to create peaks and valleys, kind of like how your crumpled fist looks like mountains on top and valleys in between the wrinkles.

These folds and wrinkles can happen over a really long time, millions of years even! And if you've ever looked at a map, you might notice that different countries have different mountain ranges. That's because the way the layers fold and push against each other is different in different parts of the world.

So next time you see a mountain, or make a Play-Doh mountain, you can remember that it's kind of like your crumpled fists and the earth just made a really huge version!