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| What Actually Causes Earthquakes? | ||||||||
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| In order to understand earthquakes, it is important to understand plate tectonics first. The plates of rock that take up the first 100 or so killometers of the earth are called plates. Earthquakes are what happens when these plates interact with each other, like bumping into each other, or sliding across or underneath one another. So what exactly makes the plates move? Well, the earths temperature deep inside its core is extremely hot. These temperatures combing with convection cause the plates to move along the earths surface. When the stress between the two plates is too much, the rock plates will break, and the resultant release of energy and stress is an earthquake. ?On average, these plates only move between 2 and 12 centimeters a year, resulting in a slow stress build up between plates. So then, how do we measure these earthquakes? Well, earthquakes are measered by their duration and amplitude. The richter scale is what is commonly used to measure and compare earthquake strength. A unit increase on the richter scale indicates an increase in the amplitude by a factor of 10. This means that an earthquake that reaches a 3.0 on the richter scales has an amplitude that is 10 times stronger of one that is a 2.0. |
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