How do earthquake form?

There are four layers of earth the solid inner core, the liquid outer core, the mantle, the crust. A sudden rapture in the fault can cause an earthquake. A fault is a gap or we can say fracture in the earth’s crust and it can be of any depth or length which varies from place to place.

Scientists believe that mostly earthquake occurs due to the movement of plates and this theory is known as plate tectonics. This says that earth’s outer crust has ten rigid, hard and large plates, twenty small plates. These plates are continuously moving on the hot and soft rock of mantle slowly. This movement causes collision among other plates which further causes stress on the lithosphere. The stress becomes enough to shift or break crust. Now the stress is released and this released energy starts moving from one place to another in the form of waves called seismic waves and these waves shake the earth which we named as earthquake. Sometimes this stress occurs near the centre of plate but mostly it occurs on the edges when two plates collide and goes over or into the plate. So by this different types of earthquake of different magnitudes are caused.

Underwater earthquakes also happen because of the collision of plates and causes the fault line sliding. When a force push the water upwards making a series of small tsunamis which gradually increases till they strike land or shallow water otherwise it continuously keeps on moving in the water and after a certain time period it dies.

Earthquake is measured usually on Richter scale which directly measures the intensity of earthquake because Mercalli scale measures only by description of people.

Earthquake can cause sudden eruption of lava from volcano or waves known as tsunamis. New land mass can also be formed.

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25 COMMENTS

    billiant i am just sat here at school and i started looking at the earthquake that just happend in haitan?? and i found this site that exsplained alot about earthquakes this stuff really intrests me… and im very worried about 2012 so if u have any information about that please let me know many thanks x

    Techtonic plate terminology discussions follow data from seismographs. What about eyewitness data? What causes most techtonic plates to give way and start to move? What is the “last straw..” so to speak to kick things moving? Eyewitnesses would report smells, temperature changes, sounds of compressed air releasing such as compressed gases like methane, natural gases, and even hydrogen sulfide gases which has a strong smell of rotten eggs, flames and smoke. So underground hydraulic forces such as upwelling, uprising fluids and gases that were freed from their compartments from oil and gas well drillings, cosmic or solar radiation effects like vibration, even moon/lunar tidal forces. These are all well known but usually rarely part of discussions limited to seismic data which is remotely gathered data and not from witnesses to the earthquake.

    this will help me a lot in my project……….i guess this will help me n my class to come first ………thanks a lot……n this is really cool

    ummm this realy help me alot on this project for science class and this info is complicated and intresting at the same time but this is really advanced for smart and wel educated kids you no crackheads wouldn’t know about this kind of info BECAUSE THEY DROPED OUT OF SCHOOOL

    This is the best information 4 my project nd my assiment……………………………………………………….

    THANK YOU VERY MUCH,TO WHOEVER WROTE THIS………………………………………………………

    thank you thank you thank you nd thank you.

    I have to write a reoprt about an unexpeted event so i pickd haiti’s earthquake and this litttle biography really helped me and i got a 4

    I think this was helpful especially just being in a earthquake. Its nice to know about something when its happening to you. Thanks, but can u show some pictures of what it looks like?

    WOW!!!This info is awesome and great for projects on earthquakes and I hope people will use this advanced website for info on earthquakes I will TELL EVERYBODY I know for sure

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