Volcano Facts
The region around the Pacific Ocean where most volcanic subduction zones lie.
What is the Pacific Ring of Fire?
The composite volcano in the Philippines that blasted an ash cloud into the atmosphere causing the daytime sky to be as dark as midnight.
What is Mt. Pinatubo?
Waves of energy that travel through the Earth’s interior and along its surface in all directions from the focus.
What are seismic waves?
The instrument used the measure the intensity of an earthquake.
What is a seismometer?
Large ocean waves that can be caused by an earthquake.
What is a tsunami?
Short volcanoes with a large, wide base and a flat summit.
The volcano that suddenly started to grow in the middle of a Mexican farmer's field.
What is Paricutin?
The location on the Earth’s surface directly above the point where the earthquake originates.
What is epicenter?
These type of waves arrive at an earthquake detector first and are detected vertically.
What are P waves?
The region in which 80% of tsunamis occur.
What is the Pacific Ring of Fire?
Small volcanoes that form quickly and have a single vent.
The country straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is home to a number of volcanoes.
What is Iceland?
The place underground in an earthquake where where rocks break.
What is the focus?
These type of waves arrive at an earthquake detector second and are detected horizontally.
What are S waves?
Most tsunami damage occurs near this point.
What is the epicenter?
Steep volcanoes with multiple vents and violent eruptions.
What are stratovolcanoes? (Or, what are composite volcanoes?)
The most active volcano on Earth that has been erupting since 1983.
What is Kilauea?
This type of fault is created when two plates move away from each other, creating tensional stress.
What is a normal fault?
The scale that is currently used to measure the magnitude (strength) of an earthquake.
What is the Mercali scale?
The country experienced an earthquake in 2004 that unleashed a tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people, the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.
What is Indonesia?
Volcanoes release this from the earth's interior when they erupt.
What is heat?
The volcano famous for its iconic, symmetrical conical stratovolcano shape and status as the highest mountain in Japan.
What is Mt. Fuji?
The type of fault created when two plates move toward each other, creating compressional stress.
What is a reverse fault?
The method used to to determine the epicenter of an earthquake.
What is the triangulation method?
The country that experienced a tsunami in 2011 that swept debris so far out to sea that it reached the United States.
What is Japan?