Science 8 – Quarter 2
towards each other.
Earthquake – weak to violent shaking of the ground
produced by the sudden movement of rock materials
below the Earth’s surface.
Tectonic Plates – large pieces of rocks that makes up
the Earth’s crust.
Lithosphere is another term for Crust
Asthenosphere is the upper part of the mantle that
is really molten. It allows the movement of
overriding plates and is fluid in material.
Faults – break on earth’s surface due to
displacement of rocks.
Parts of a Fault:
Fault line – serves as the trace of the fault
Dip – refers to the angle that the fault cuts through
the soil layers
Hanging Block – blocks referring to the portion
above the fault
Foot wall – blocks referring to the portion below the
fault
Elastic Rebound – as tectonic plates are slowly
moving, their edges are locked in place causing
bending of the crust along the plate edges. It is when
the force tries to make the edges slip overcomes the
friction making them stick, an earthquake will occur.
The bending and subsequent catching up of the crust
is also referred to as elastic rebounding.
Active fault – Movement or slippage is expected to
occur, they mark certain areas that are prone to
earthquakes. Clear breaks in the soil layers from the
surface down below. Has generated earthquakes
within 10,000 years
Inactive fault – ceased activity for a long time around
10,000 years. Do not disturb or break all the layers of
the earth.
Types of Stresses:
Sheer – causes the rock layers to move horizontally
Tension – causes the rocks to pull against each other
Compression – causes the rock layers to move
Horst and Grabens – are the alternating uplifted and
down dropped blocks.
Normal fault is formed by tension stress that pull
rocks apart from hanging wall moves down relative
to the footwall associated with divergent plate
boundaries.
Reverse fault is formed by the compressional force
that push the plates toward each other.
Thrust fault is a type of reverse fault whose dip is
less than 45 degrees.
Strike-Slip Fault is a result of sideways movement
due to shear stress of blocks of rocks.
Oblique Fault has both the dip slip and strike slip
components formed by shear stress and tensional
stress.
Tectonic Plates – large pieces of rocks that makes up
the Earth’s crust.
Layers of the Earth:
Crust, Mantle, Outer Core and Inner core.
Elastic Limit – this refers to the threshold of stress
that rock can hold before it undergo deformation. As
rocks surpass their elastic limit, rocks release their
stored potential energy.
Parts of an Earthquake:
Focus – location where the slippage or movement
took place.
Epicenter – point or ground directly above the
hypocenter.
Fault Plane – the plane along which the break of
shear of a fault occurs.
Magnitude – It refers to the amount of energy
released by an earthquake as the ground shakes.
Richter scale – Developed by Charles Richter of
California Institute of Technology in 1935.
Modified Mercalli Scale – Developed by Giuseppe
Mercalli from Italy in 1902.
Earthquakes can be categorized as: A shallow
earthquake with a depth less than 70km; an
intermediate earthquake with a depth ranging 70 to
300km; a deep earthquake with a depth of more
than 300km.
Tsunami – harbor waves that come into the bay from
the ocean. These are huge destructive waves that
are generated when earthquake occurs underwater.
Tsunami Formation:
Initiation - earthquake displaces the water vertically.
Usually happens when the earthquake moves in a
normal or reverse fault.
Split – ripples of water
Amplification – increase of wave’s height
Run-up – It is when the waves hit the land surface.
If the water is deeper, then the tsunami’s speed will
increase. But if the water is shallow, then the
tsunami’s speed will slow down or the tsunami may
completely disappear.
Seismic Waves – energy released when earthquakes
occurs. An example of Mechanical Wave
Seismology – study of seismic waves.
Types of Seismic Waves; Body waves and Surface
waves
Types of Body waves:
1. P wave (Primary) – Parallel in both
movement and to the direction of the wave.
The particles move back and forth.
2. S wave (Secondary) – particle moves in a
vertical motion. While the wave moves in
horizontal motion which makes it
perpendicular.
Types of Surface waves:
1. Rayleigh – particle moves circularly
2. Love – perpendicular to the particle
Seismograph – used to detect seismic waves
Seismogram – data collected in seismograph
P waves are collected first because it is the fastest
and comes first when a wave is detected but it’s also
the weakest wave. S waves comes in second.
Surface Waves have the greatest amplitude.
Wind – movement of air in the atmosphere.
Causes of winds:
 Caused by difference of air pressure due to
unequal heating of the atmosphere
 The earth rotates 22.5 degrees in its axis
and causes winds
 Weathers and climates takes place in
troposphere
Winds are created by the heating of the air and the
decreasing pressure (warm air rises creating low
pressure). It is also created because cool air rushes
to replace the warm air (cooler dense air, produces
high pressure). Air moves from high to low pressure,
creating winds.
Weather = Short period of time
Climate = Long period of time
Low pressure air = warm
High Pressure air = cold
Trade winds – winds in between the equator (points
to the west). Westerlies and Southeast meet at the
polar front.
LPA or Low pressure area is a forming tropical
cyclone produced when warm air rises.
Prevailing winds:
 Northeast Trade winds
 Northeast Monsoon (Amihan) – moderate
temperature, little or no rainfall and a
prevailing wind from the East.
  Southwest Monsoon (Habagat) – Hot and
humid weather, frequent heavy rainfall,
prevailing wind from the West.
Monsoon – caused by the current between
continent and ocean.
North Western Pacific Ocean = Typhoon
North Atlantic Ocean = Hurricane
Typhoons are generally tropical cyclones.
Hurricanes form at the West whilst Typhoons at the
East. Tropical Cyclones on the northern hemisphere
moves counter clockwise while on the southern
hemisphere they move clockwise.
Warm moist air and water vapor form typhoons,
where ocean water must be 26.5 degrees and 50
meters deep.
3 parts of a tropical cyclone:
1. Eye (center) - is a region of mostly calm
weather at the center of tropical cyclones.
2. Eye wall – the most dangerous and
destructive part of a tropical cyclone.
3. Spiral Rain Bands – curved bands of clouds
and thunderstorms that trail away from the
eye wall in a spiral fashion
The farther the regions of a typhoon is from the eye,
the higher pressure it gets. The wind speed is faster
at the eye wall than of the eye.
3 stages; Origin, Mature, Dissipation
Conditions for a cyclone: Ocean area with surface
temperature above 26.5 Celsius; the warm layer
must be at least 50 meters; The middle atmosphere
must be relatively humid at a height of about 5,000m
above the surface; The developing system should be
at least 500km; Wind speed should be no more than
10m per second; Altitude should be 10,000m
Typhoons get weaker when it reaches or hit land.
Classifications of a tropical cyclone:
 Tropical Depression : Maximum of 64kph
 Tropical Storm: 64 – 118kph
 Typhoon: 118-200kph
 Super typhoon: Exceeding 200kph
PSWS or Public Storm Warning Signals; PSWS#1-4
Astrology – study of space and the celestial objects.
Meteor – light phenomenon or a streak of light that
occurs when a meteoroid burns up as it enters the
Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteoroid – broken up rock and dust from either a
comet, asteroid, the Moon or from Mars.
A meteoroid can be as small as a grain of sand or as
big as a boulder. When it enters Earth’s Atmosphere,
the air in front of the meteoroid heats up, causing
materials to burn up.
Meteorite – A fragment from the meteoroid that
survives and makes it to ground.
Comet – cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rocks,
and dusts that orbit the sun.
Parts of a Comet:
 Dust tail: prominent tail of dust and gasses
generally in direction of solar wind but
curves toward comet path.
 Hydrogen envelope: Invisible irregular cloud
surrounding the coma.
 Ion tail: trail of plasma streams back from
the solar wind.
 Coma: vapor cloud surrounding the nucleus
 Nucleus: solid comet core, may be hidden
by coma.
Tails get longer the closer a comet gets to the Sun.
Tails are always directed away from Sun. Gas tail
points straight away from Sun. Dust tail curves
toward orbital path.
Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud is where comets are
usually originated.
1P/Halley’s Comet – named after English astronomer
Edmond Halley, who examined reports of a comet
approaching Earth in 1531, 1607 and 1682. He
concluded that these three comets were actually the
same comet returning over and over again, and
predicted that it would return in 1758.

C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp – It was discovered in July 23,

1995, independently, by both Alan Hale and Thomas
Bopp. It’s also called the great comet of 1977, comet
C/1995 O1 Hale Bopp is a large comet with a nucleus
measuring approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) in
diameter.

C/1996 B2 Hyakutake – On January 30, 1996, Yuji

Hyakutake in Japan discovered a new comet using
25x150 binoculars. The comet has become a bright
naked-eye object and remained so in March, April
and May, in 1996.

Asteroids – sometimes called minor planets. They

are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early
formation of our Solar System about 4.6 Billion years
ago.

Current Asteroid Count: 1,113,527 asteroids.

Composition of Asteroids:

 The C Type (Chrondrite)

 The S Type (Stony)
 The M Type (Metallic)

Asteroid Ceres – discovered by astronomer Giovanni

Piazzi in 1801. It is the largest asteroid with a
diameter just less than 1000 kilometers. Ceres was
considered a planet when it was discovered but later
was called an asteroid.

Vesta: A differentiated Asteroid – Its relatively high

reflectivity of 30% makes it the brightest asteroid, so
bright that it is actually visible to the unaided eye if
you know just where to look.

Asteroid Classifications:

1. Main Asteroid Belt – asteroids orbit within

the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
2. Trojans – these asteroids share an orbit
with a Larger planet but do not collide with
it
3. Near-Earth Asteroids – these objects have
orbits that pass close by that of Earth.