Kinds of Faults
When there's too much stress in a rock, the rock will break and that will create a fault. A fault is a break in Earth's crust where slabs of crust slip past each other. The rocks on either sides of a fault can move up, down, sideways. Faults usually occur along plate boundaries, where the forces of plate motion compress, pull, or shear the crust so much that the crust breaks. There are three main types of faults: strike-slip faults, normal faults, and reverse faults.
Strike-Slip Faults
Shearing is what creates strike-slip faults. A strike-slip fault is when the rocks on both sides of a fault slip past each other with a small up-or-down motion. A strike-slip fault forms a transform boundary between two plates.
Normal Faults
In earth's crust there is tension forces, they end up causing normal faults. A normal fault is at an angle, which makes one rock lie above and the other below. If half of the fault lies above it is hanging wall and if the other half of the fault lies below it is a foot wall. When a hanging wall slips downward that means movement occurs in a normal fault. If a tension forces start to create normal faults, plates start to diverge, or pull apart.
Reverse Faults
Compression forces creates reverse faults. Reverse faults has the same form as a normal fault, but the blocks move in different directions. Of a reverse fault's rock forming a hanging wall slides up of a footwall.
Fun Fact
There's a reverse fault in Mt. Gould in Glacier National Park that started 600 million years ago.