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What is an earthquake exactly?
I know that when an earthquake happens that lots of stuff shakes and is destroyed. (I have only seen these things on TV). So, I was thinking about it yesterday and was wondering...
What is an earthquake? What makes earthquakes happen and all of that?
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First, we all know that the plates at the surface of the Earth are constantly in motion, right? (You know, the "plate tectonics" thing.)
There are places where the plates are stuck at the edges as the rest of them are continue to move. Strain slowly builds up at the rocks along the edges. And eventually, it comes to the point where the rocks just cannot stand it anymore and break (faulting--right before an earthquake, you usually see a crack on the surface, right? That's the fault. Faulting is a the sudden movement of the rock along a broken surface).
And because the rocks finally break, there is nothing to stop the plates anymore. The two sides move (this is when the earthquake happen--after the faulting, when the plates move).
It's kind of similar to when you hold both sides of a piece of paper and pull them on an opposite direction. The paper is torn because it could not stand the stress.
Did I make any sense? Hahaha, sorry if I am not; I am not a very good at explaining things.
=)
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Earthquakes are the Earth's natural means of releasing stress. When the Earth's plates move against each other, stress is put on the lithosphere. When this stress is great enough, the lithosphere breaks or shifts. Imagine holding a pencil horizontally. If you were to apply a force to both ends of the pencil by pushing down on them, you would see the pencil bend. After enough force was applied, the pencil would break in the middle, releasing the stress you have put on it. The Earth's crust acts in the same way. As the plates move they put forces on themselves and each other. When the force is large enough, the crust is forced to break. When the break occurs, the stress is released as energy which moves through the Earth in the form of waves, which we feel and call an earthquake.
(:
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