Earthquakes

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Earthquakes or tremblers are the shaking, rolling or sudden shock of the Earth. Tremblers are very destructive and occur thousands of times everyday worldwide, usually being small tremors and happen millions of times every year. Earthquakes can cause tsunamis. On average, a magnitude 8 strikes and more than 10 000 people die in the earthquake, annually. Earthquakes are the Earth's way of releasing stress in between the tectonic plates.

Earthquakes happen when the tectonic plates under the Earth squeeze, stretch, move, break apart, collide, grind or slide against each other with a large amount of force. There are approximately 20 tectonic plates along the surface of the earth that constantly move and slowly pass each other. The Earth reacts like a pencil. If force is applied to both ends of a pencil, then it would bend. Once enough force is applied, the pencil would break in half, releasing the stress that was forced onto it.

English: A seismic wave is an elastic wave generat...

Tectonic Plate Rift

Map of the tectonic plates of the Earth

The tectonic plates are made from giant, thin, relatively rigid slabs of rock and makes up the crust of the Earth. The Earth is like an onion but contains four main layers. There is the inner core which is solid nickel and iron, the outer core which is liquid molten lava, the mantle which is consisting of rocks, iron and magnesium, and there is the crust which are slabs of rock that slowly move around on the mantle, slide past each other and bump into each other. Each piece moves in different directions, at different speeds and varies in the plates' thickness.

The edges of the tectonic plates are made up of numerous fault lines and most of the earthquakes in the world occur on these faults lines. The edges of the plates are called plate boundaries and they are very rough. Because...