Physical weathering, also known as mechanical weathering, is the process that breaks rocks apart without changing their chemical composition. It is caused by external forces such as changes in temperature, wind, rain, and waves. Physical weathering can occur in different ways, including:

• Abrasion: This occurs when rocks rub against each other, causing them to break apart into smaller pieces/Textbook_Construction/Physical_Weathering).

• Exfoliation: This occurs when the outer layers of rocks peel away due to a reduction in pressure during uplift and erosion.

• Freeze-thaw: This occurs when water seeps into cracks in rocks, freezes, and expands, eventually breaking the rock apart.

• Ice wedging: This occurs when water repeatedly freezes and melts within small crevices in the rock surface, causing the expansion and contraction of the water to exert tremendous pressure on the surrounding rock and make cracks wider.

• Root wedging: This occurs when plant roots grow into cracks in rocks, causing them to widen and break apart.

Physical weathering tends to produce mostly sand-sized sediment and larger grains because most of the fracturing occurs along mineral boundaries/Textbook_Construction/Physical_Weathering). Physical weathering works along with chemical weathering to efficiently wear down rocks. Breaking a rock through physical weathering increases the effective surface area in which chemical weathering can occur, and through changing the composition of rocks in chemical weathering, the durability of a rocks surface can decrease, allowing for it to be more easily removed by physical processes/Textbook_Construction/Physical_Weathering).