Earthquake Vocabulary
A fracture or zone of fractures between two blocks of rock.
What is a fault
What was the name of the Earthquake that occurred in the Bay Area on October 17, 1989?
What is the Loma Prieta Earthquake
What do we call waves that travel through or over Earth?
What are seismic waves
What do seismologists use to measure earthquake strength?
What is the Richter Scale
What is the name of the fault that is found in our own city of Hollister, California?
What is the Calaveras Fault.
The spot on the surface just above where an earthquake starts.
What is an epicenter
What California city did the big 1906 earthquake occur?
What is San Francisco
What are the two different types of body waves called that travel through the Earth as the result of an earthquake?
What are P and S waves
Which two plates created the powerful California San Andreas Fault.
What type of fault pulls apart?
What is a normal fault
The size of an earthquake.
What is the magnitude
Which country did the largest recorded earthquake occur in 1960?
What is Chile in South America
What are the fastest seismic waves that can travel through solids, liquids, and gases called?
What are P Waves
What is the degree to which people feel an earthquake and how much damage it causes called?
What is earthquake intensity
What type of faults have tectonic plates that collide?
What are reverse faults
Point inside the earth where the earthquake started.
What is the focus
What is 7.9
S waves can only travel through this.
What are solids
Which type of instruments are used to record the motion of the ground during an earthquake?
What are seismographs
What types of faults move horizontally past each other?
What are Strike Slip Faults
Earthquakes that follow the largest shock of an earthquake sequence.
What is an aftershock
What is 9.5
How are the waves on the surface different from the body waves inside the Earth?
They are more destructive
What do we call an involuntary movement of Earth's surface caused by the stress in it?
What is a tremor
Which Bay Area fault is considered one of the most dangerous in the world because scientists believe it is due for a large earthquake?
What is the Hayward Fault