Toby Bechtel, age 13, of Austin, Tex., for his question:

HOW IS A CAPE FORMED?

A cape is a headland, cliff or point of land that projects prominently into a lake, sea or ocean. Tips of islands and continents are good places to find capes.

Capes can be formed in one of four ways:

First, offshore bars or barrier beaches occasionally form points projecting far into the sea. They apparently result from converging shore currents depositing sandy materials in shallow water. Cape Hatteras, N.C., is an example.

Next, river deposits may accumulate in shallow offshore water until a point of land has been created, as at A third type of cape is Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It is an example of a cape formed by rocks, gravels and sands deposited along the margins of a continental glacier.

A fourth type of cape can be found at Cape York in Australia. Huge rock cliffs, which withstand wave erosion better than softer coastal material, may slowly project away from the shoreline to form headlands.

People sometimes use other terms for a cape: point, head and promontory.