Introduction to Physical Geology Practice Exam

The hanging wall is the block of rock that sits above the fault plane. The term comes from imagining the fault plane as a wall and the rock above it as the part that would “hang” over the plane. The opposite side is the footwall, which lies below the plane. So the hanging wall’s location is above the fault plane. Movement directions (normal, reverse) describe how these blocks move relative to each other, but the position itself is simply above the plane.