ERS103H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Elastic Energy, Hypocenter, Epicenter
Document Summary
Earthquakes: are vibrations caused by the sudden breaking or frictional sliding of rock in the earth. As stress is added to a rock, it bends slightly without breaking (elastic behavior). Continued stress causes cracks to develop and grow, eventually progressing to the point of failure. Stored elastic energy is released all at once, creating an earthquake. Normal fault: hanging wall moves down relative to the footwall. Reverse fault: hanging wall moves up relative to the footwall. Strike-slip fault: one block slides laterally past the other block tend to be close to vertical (transform). The san andreas is a very active strike-slip fault seeing hundreds of earthquakes annually* Displacement: the offset or the amount of movement across a fault. Sometimes evident by offset of fences, roads, streams, ect. When a fault moves, it is quickly slowed by friction due to bumps along the fault. Fault trace: the place that a fault intersects the ground.
