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9042 Earthquakes Waves
9042 Earthquakes Waves
Earthquakes
Professor K. W. Chow
Department of Mechanical Engineering
The University of Hong Kong
(Extracted from
Brumbaugh, 1999,
P.2)
Why do earthquakes happens? The myths:
• The Greeks regarded the temper tantrums of the god of
the sea, Poseidon, were the cause of earthquakes.
Whenever Poseidon put his feet on the ground, an
earthquake would be set off.
(Extracted
from
Brumbaugh,
1999, P.4)
Modern Idea about Earthquakes
• Modern space exploration technology found no
catfish, nor frog beneath our Earth. Hence, what
our ancestors thought might not be correct.
• Modern ideas about the causes of earthquakes
have a history of only about 200 years.
• It is now generally agreed that an earthquake is
the result of a sudden release of energy in the
Earth’s surface as seismic waves.
Basic Geography: What is inside the Earth?
(Earth's tectonic
plates. Plate
boundaries are
shown in red.
Courtesy of
Windows to the
Universe,
http://www.window
s.ucar.edu)
Locations of Earthquakes
• Most earthquakes around the world occur on
these faults.
Body
Wave
– S wave
(Secondary wave)
A Delaware Geologic
Survey Seismometer
location
Extracted from
http://www.lhup.edu/
mkhalequ/Fieldtrip/pi
ctures/Seismograph
@DGS.JPG
Principle of a seismograph
• The basic principle of modern
seismographs is easy to
understand. It works like a
pendulum. The seismograph
has its supporting frame set
firmly in the ground, and a
heavy weight hanged freely.
• During an earthquake, the
supporting frame is shaken by
seismic waves. However, inertia
keeps the vibration of the
weight to a minimum. A spring
or string is also added to help
absorb all the movement.
• The relative motion can then be (Extracted from
recorded as a wiggly line by pen http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/onlin
and ink on paper wrapped e/quakes/seismo/)
(Extracted from
http://
www.alancolville.c
om/quakes/
seismograph_vert.
jpg)
How to understand a seismogram?
• A seismogram appears to be a complicated series of wavy
lines.
• However, with careful observations, important information
such as the source location, magnitude and source properties
of an earthquake can be extracted from seismograms.
Extracted from
http://www.wwnorton.
com/college/geo/ege
o/flash/8_3.swf)
How to locate an earthquake?
• We are able to locate the source of an
earthquake by analyzing the seismograms.
• The idea is simple but requires some
knowledge about the seismic waves.
• You learned that an earthquake will radiate
P and S waves. P waves are faster than S
waves. It is this fact that allows us to locate
an earthquake rather easily.
How to locate an earthquake?
• An analogy between P and S waves to lightning and
thunder will be helpful.
• Light travels faster than sound, so you will first see the
lightning before the thunder in a thunderstorm. If you are
close to the storm, the thunder will boom right after the
lightning, but if you are far away from the lightning, the
thunder will arrive at you for a longer time lag.
• In other words, the further you are from the storm, the
longer the time lag between
the lightning and the thunder
will be.
Extracted from
Wikipedia
How to locate an earthquake?
• P waves are like the lightning while S waves are like the
thunder.
• If you are close to the earthquake, the S waves will be
just behind the P waves. If you are far away, there will be
more time between the two types of waves.
(Extracted
from
www.iris.edu
/edu/onepag
ers/no6.pdf)
How to locate an earthquake?
• Hence, we can tell how
close we are to the source of
an earthquake by looking at
the amount of time between
the P and S waves (S-P
time) on a seismogram.
• The scientists have
constructed nomograms like
the one shown below to
convert the S-P time into the
distance between the source
and the seismic station.
(Extracted from
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UP
Seis/why.html)
Example
• For example,
the S-P time in the
seismogram above
is around 24 s.
According to the
nomogram, the
distance between
the source and this
seismic station is
around 220 km.
How to locate an earthquake?
• Although we can tell that we are 220km away
from the earthquake source, we cannot tell in
what direction from the seismograph the
earthquake was.
• In other words, we can draw a circle on a map
around the station with the radius of the circle
being the determined distance to the
earthquake. We know that the earthquake lies
somewhere on the circle, but we are yet to know
the precise location!
How to locate an earthquake?
Triangulation
• It is called triangulation since it takes three seismographs to locate
an earthquake.
• From the three seismograms, three different circles with different
radius can be drawn on the map.
• The radius of each is the distance from that station to the source of
the earthquake.
• The intersection of those three circles is then the exact location of
the earthquake.
(Extracted from
www.iris.edu/edu/o
nepagers/no6.pdf)
Richter’s Scale
• How do we quantify an earthquake?
• The Richter magnitude scale, or
sometimes called the local magnitude
ML scale, assigns a single number to
express the seismic energy released
by an earthquake.
• For example, the 2008 Sichuan
Earthquake was an 8 earthquake on
Richter scale, and the 2004 Indian
Ocean earthquake causing the
devastating tsunami in Southeast
Asia was a 9.3 earthquake on Richter
scale.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/