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They are usually formed as a result of water erosion over a period of many hundreds of thousands of years. Continuous exposure to a water course under pressure or at force results in the dissolution of chemicals in limestone rock, causing the rock to wear away and to create natural tunnels or deep indentations within it's surface. Limestone caves are often a legacy of the paths of ancient rivers or, when on the coast, the effects of the sea. But they can be formed by other means, such as earthquakes creating a crack or schism in the rock face. They can also be made artificially as the result of human mining or engineering projects that have been long abandoned.
What else can I help you with?
How is chemistry related to Guatemala sinkhole?
Most sinkholes form when mildly acidic water dissolves limestone underground, this forms a limestone cave. A sinkhole occurs when the cave collapses.
What process creates cave?
Caves form when acidic rain dissolved limestone.
What is limestone cave formed of?
Limestone and limestone formations.
Why is the limestone cave sometimes called the soultion cave?
Limestone caves are sometimes called solution caves because they are formed through a process called solution weathering. This occurs when water containing carbon dioxide dissolves the limestone rock, creating cave systems over time. The dissolved limestone is carried away in the form of a solution, hence the term "solution cave."
How does the floor of a limestone cave form?
I'm not really sure what you had in mind. Given that the cave is in limestone (as the vast majority of them are) there has to be a dimensional limit to the dissolution and erosion processes. The floor is there by default: it is the lowest surface along a passage at that given time in the cave's development.
What do you call the pointed projection that can form on the floor of a limestone cave?
Stalagmite. The opposite, growing downwards from the roof, is a "stalactite".
Solid limestone may change into a cave when?
Solid limestone may change into a cave when it is dissolved by acidic rainwater or groundwater over long periods of time. The water dissolves the limestone, creating underground voids and passages that eventually form a cave system. Other factors like tectonic activity or volcanic activity can also contribute to cave formation in certain circumstances.
How did the leiturgia cave form?
Sulfuric acid and gasses erodes the limestone and produces gypsum crystals over thousands of years.
What kind of rock is eaten away to form stachtites and staglamites?
Limestone is the type of rock that is commonly dissolved by water to form stalactites and stalagmites in caves. This process occurs over thousands of years when calcium carbonate in the limestone is slowly deposited as water drips from the cave ceiling.
What type of cave is Mammoth Cave?
it is a 'karst' cave, i.e. formed by the action of water on limestone.
How did erosion form mammoth cave?
Mammoth cave began forming about 10 million years ago when an ancient sea covering the central United States disappeared and erosional forces let cracks and holes expose the limestone that was beneath the sea. Rainwater began to get underground and hallowed out the cave.
How can a limestone cave be formed?
From dissolution and erosion of limestone by acidic water over time.
