Lexikon

physical weathering is caused by the effects of changing temperature on rocks, causing the rock to break apart. The process is sometimes assisted by water.

There are two main types of physical weathering:

• Freeze-thaw occurs when water continually seeps into cracks, freezes and expands, eventually breaking the rock apart.
• Exfoliation occurs when minerals in the rocks are continuously heated and cooled in hot climates.
• On the effect of cristal-formation of salts or oxide formation of iron or other metals. Increased volume of these chemical componunds break the rock.
• Plnat root growth is able to break the rock too.

Physical weathering happens especially in places places where there is little soil and few plants grow, such as in mountain regions and hot deserts. Either through repeated melting and freezing of water (mountains and tundra) or through expansion and contraction of the surface layer of rocks that are baked by the sun (hot deserts).