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| Geology Building |
 Title text: The administration thinks it's weird, but the geologists say it looks normal. |
Explanation
The comic depicts a university building which houses the geology department. The design of the front deviates from a standard rectangle, with all boundaries on the left side of a diagonal line through the middle shifted slightly down and left along that boundary. This mimics the motion of a normal fault line between two parts of Earth's crust. The caption indicates that the geology department designed their own building, and chose to add a fault line as part of the theme.
Since the department's design affected key parts of the building like windows and roofing, it might extend throughout the whole building. If the fault was formed the way geological faults form - with the the sediment layers first settling in horizontaly and then sinking down due to the spreading of the underlying tectonic plates this will rupture water pipes and electrical wires in the walls and even undermine the integrity of the building by introducing discontinuities in the building's framing. If building was instead built with the fault line as part of the layout and reinforced accordingly, it would still be impractical, disrupting the floors and doorways of individual rooms by introducing a step.
The title text plays on the geological definition of a 'normal fault'. A normal fault is the result of a tectonic plate breaking up, like the East African Rift. This results in part of the plate sinking into the newly opened space, creating a vertical fault line similar to the building. In contrast, a slip fault is the result of two plates sliding past each other (e.g. the San Andreas fault) and would result in a horizontal fault, which is clearly not the case with this building.
Transcript
Department of Geology
- [Building with a diagonal fault line through it]
- [Caption below the panel:]
- The Administration regretted giving the Geology Department free reign to design their new building.
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