Earthquakes
Earthquakes are the most deadly natural disaster in the World. Earthquakes are caused by sudden movement of rocks under the earth's surface. Rocks respond to stress (squeezed or pulled apart) near the earth's surface by breaking. The land around the fault may shirt horizontally, vertically, or a combination of both.
There are many scales to rate earthquakes on damage and power. The first scale is called a mercalli scale. It measures the damage involved in an earthquake. If an earthquake is in a city around a lot of buildings, it would have a big mercalli rating. The other scale is called a richter scale. It measures the power and the vibration of the earthquake. If there was an earthquake out in the middle of a desert with a richter scale rating it would have a small mercalli rating because there wasn't any damage.
The epicenter of an earthquake is the middle and where it begins.
An aerial view of the San Andreas fault in the Car...
English: Schematic of strike-slip faults
Strike-slip faultTo find the epicenter there are three seismographic stations which pick up the distance from the earthquake, but they don't know where it is. The three stations make circles around the station the size of the distance in diameter where the three circles all intersect is where the epicenter is.
Our class has been assigned earthquakes individually. The earthquake I have is the one in Charleston, South Carolina. This earthquake occurred on August 31, 1886. This earthquake was felt from over two and a half million square miles. It was the strongest earthquake to hit the eastern seaboard. It had ground shaking damage as far as 200 miles. Sixty people did not survive the earthquake.
The Charleston earthquake was a strike slip fault. A strike slip fault that rocks break due to shearing forces and rocks on either side move past each other without...