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Physics Of Earthquakes And Its Effects

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Physics of Earthquakes
Introduction
A failure in the interior of the Earth’s crust is the cause of most earthquakes. Once the stress inside the crust grows beyond the strength for that location of the crust, a failure occurs within the crust and seismic waves, which we know as earthquakes, are radiated outward. It was once thought that this description of seismic activity was the cause for all earthquakes, but now seismologists know the way earthquakes form and start is a very diverse process. Most earthquakes are classified in the category of being brittle failures, which generate strong seismic waves; some earthquakes involve slow slip motion. There is also evidence to suggest that some earthquakes are more of a thermal process due to large amounts of heat generation, rather than large seismic activity. (Scholz 2002) Also, some earthquakes are not the result of faulting however, but caused by large landslides. In the early days of seismology, these differences were noticed qualitatively but the technology available during that time made it hard to accurately tell the difference. Before an earthquake takes place, there is a large buildup of potential energy. The energies involved in earthquakes can be described by the elastic strain energy W, plus the radiated energy Er, the energy mechanically dissipated during an earthquake, Eg and the thermal energy due to heat dissipation, Eh. Since this equation is a description of potential energies, the actual event of an

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