EAPS 10200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Radon, Logarithmic Scale, Seismology
7 Oct 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Earthquakes: when two blocks of adjacent rock suddenly move relative to each other, like the book on the previous slide, an earthquake has just happened. It is often unexpected and doesn"t last very long but the results can be devastating. The surface may move laterally or up and down or both. Either way anything on the surface can be greatly damaged: the two rock masses move along a plane called the fault plane. Like your hands the two rock masses had been stuck together by friction. When the forces along the fault plane exceed the friction holding them together the resulting motion releases an extraordinary amount of energy. These are just a few of the questions that can be asked: the energy released by an earthquake is much like throwing a pebble in a pond. The energy radiates away from the focus in waves like the pebble makes on the water. These waves are called seismic energy or waves.
