Does ground shaking cause the greatest damage in an earthquake?
This photo shows the Mission District of San Francisco burning after the 1906 earthquake. The greatest damage in earthquakes is often not from the ground shaking but from the effects of that shaking. In this earthquake, the shaking broke the gas mains and the water pipes so that when the gas caught fire there was no way to put it out. Do you wonder why the people standing in the street are looking toward the fire rather than running in the opposite direction?
An earthquake is sudden ground movement caused by the sudden release of energy stored in rocks. Earthquakes happen when so much stress builds up in the rocks that the rocks rupture. The energy is transmitted by seismic waves. Earthquakes can be so small they go completely unnoticed, or so large that it can take years for a region to recover.
Elastic Rebound Theory
The description of how earthquakes occur is called elastic rebound theory ( Figure below ).
Elastic rebound theory. Stresses build on both sides of a fault, causing the rocks to deform plastically (Time 2). When the stresses become too great, the rocks break and end up in a different location (Time 3). This releases the built up energy and creates an earthquake.
Elastic rebound theory in an animation: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/animations/animation.php?flash_title=Elastic+Rebound&flash_file=elasticrebound&flash_width=300&flash_height=350 .
Focus and Epicenter
In the vertical cross section of crust, there are two features labeled - the focus and the epicenter, which is directly above the focus.
In about 75% of earthquakes, the focus is in the top 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) of the crust. Shallow earthquakes cause the most damage because the focus is near where people live. However, it is the epicenter of an earthquake that is reported by scientists and the media.
- A sudden release of energy stored in rocks causes an earthquake.
- The focus is where the rocks rupture. The epicenter is the point on the ground directly above the focus.
- Most earthquakes are shallow; these do the most damage.
Use this resource to answer the questions that follow.
1. What causes an earthquake?
2. What is the focus?
3. Which waves travel the fastest?
4. Which waves cannot travel through the core?
5. What happens to the waves as distance increases?
1. How does elastic rebound theory describe how an earthquake takes place?
2. Where is an earthquake's focus? Where is its epicenter?
3. Why do shallow earthquakes cause the most damage?