Earthquakes

Introduction:

Earthquakes occur because of a sudden release of stored energy. This energy has built up over long periods of time as a result of tectonic forces within the earth. Most earthquakes take place along faults in the upper 25 miles of the earth's surface when one side rapidly moves relative to the other side of the fault. This sudden motion causes shock waves (seismic waves) to radiate from their point of origin called the focus and travel through the earth. It is these seismic waves that can produce ground motion which people call an earthquake. Each year there are thousands of earthquakes that can be felt by people and over one million that are strong enough to be recorded by instruments. Strong seismic waves can cause great local damage and they can travel large distances. But even weaker seismic waves can travel far and can be detected by sensitive scientific instruments called seismographs.

Effects:

Earthquakes can cause fires by damaging electrical power or gas lines. Earthquakes, along with severe storms, volcanic activity, coastal wave attack, and wildfires, can produce slope instability leading to landslides. When the intensity of an earthquake is very high can destroy many houses and other things. Homeless can stay in just a few seconds, an earthquake can be very dangerous

Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water. These tsunamis can cause destruction on distant shores hours after the earthquake that gender.

You can even die in an earthquake while in a place where they can drop something produced by tremor. Sometimes when there is an earthquake can ignite something and it can be hard shutdown

Causes:

The short answer is that earthquakes are caused by faulting, a sudden lateral or vertical movement of rock along a rupture (break) surface.

Here's the longer answer: The surface of the Earth is in continuous slow motion. This is plate tectonics--the motion of immense rigid plates at the surface of the Earth in response to flow of rock within the Earth. The plates cover the entire surface of the globe. Since they are all moving they rub against each other in some places (like the San Andreas Fault in California), sink beneath each other in others (like the Peru-Chile Trench along the western border of South America), or spread apart from each other (like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge).

At such places the motion isn't smooth--the plates are stuck together at the edges but the rest of each plate is continuing to move, so the rocks along the edges are distorted (what we call "strain"). As the motion continues, the strain builds up to the point where the rock cannot withstand any more bending. With a lurch, the rock breaks and the two sides move.

Ways to stop it:

Human can’t stop an earthquake fiscally, but we can

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