What factors affect the impact of an earthquake?
What factors affect the impact of an earthquake?
Population density (rural or urban area). The more densely populated an area, the more likely there are to be deaths and casualties. Communication – accessibility for rescue teams. Time of day influences whether people are in their homes, at work or travelling.
What are 3 effects of earthquakes?
The effects from earthquakes include ground shaking, surface faulting, ground failure, and less commonly, tsunamis.
What are four factors that affect the amount of destruction caused by an earthquake?
Many factors influence the strength of earthquake shaking at a site including the earthquake’s magnitude, the site’s proximity to the fault, the local geology, and the soil type.
What is the amount of energy an earthquake releases?
The magnitude of an earthquake, usually expressed by the Richter Scale, is a measure of the amplitude of the seismic waves. The moment magnitude of an earthquake is a measure of the amount of energy released – an amount that can be estimated from seismograph readings.
What does a 7 earthquake feel like?
Intensity 7: Very strong — Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken. Intensity 6: Strong — Felt by all, many frightened.
Which earthquake wave is more dangerous?
S waves are more dangerous than P waves because they have greater amplitude and produce vertical and horizontal motion of the ground surface. The slowest waves, surface waves, arrive last. They travel only along the surface of the Earth. There are two types of surface waves: Love and Rayleigh waves.
Which wave comes first in an earthquake?
P waves
What are the 3 types of waves in a earthquake?
There are three basic types of seismic waves – P-waves, S-waves and surface waves.
Do Love or Rayleigh waves cause more damage?
Love waves cause more damage than Rayleigh waves, but both are highly destructive because they occur near the surface of the Earth.
Why do love waves cause the most damage?
Love waves have a particle motion, which, like the S-wave, is transverse to the direction of propagation but with no vertical motion. Their side-to-side motion (like a snake wriggling) causes the ground to twist from side to side, that’s why Love waves cause the most damage to structures.
Which type of waves are useful to seismologist?
Body waves are the type of waves that are useful for seismologist in their study of the earth’s interior because they are the only type of waves that give information about the deep interior of the Earth. Body waves have two types, the P waves and the S waves.
What causes Love waves?
The Love wave is a result of the interference of many shear waves (S-waves) guided by an elastic layer, which is welded to an elastic half space on one side while bordering a vacuum on the other side. Love waves travel with a lower velocity than P- or S- waves, but faster than Rayleigh waves.
What are the two types of body waves?
Body waves are of two types: Primary waves (also called P-waves, or pressure waves) and Secondary waves (S-waves, or shear waves). P-waves are compression waves. They can propagate in solid or liquid material. S-waves are shear waves.
What is the difference between Love and Rayleigh waves?
Love waves have a horizontal motion that moves the surface from side to side perpendicular to the direction the wave is traveling. Of the two surface waves, Love waves move faster. Rayleigh waves cause the ground to shake in an elliptical pattern. This motion is similar to that observed in ocean waves.
How fast do love waves travel?
10,000 miles per hour
How fast do Rayleigh waves travel?
Rayleigh waves emanating outward from the epicenter of an earthquake travel along the surface of the earth at about 10 times the speed of sound in air (0.340 km/s), that is ~3 km/s.
Where do seismic waves travel slowest and fastest?
Body waves travel through the body of a planet. Surface waves travel along the surface. There are two types of body waves: P-waves travel fastest and through solids, liquids, and gases; S-waves only travel through solids. Surface waves are the slowest, but they do the most damage in an earthquake.
Where do love waves travel?
Love, a British mathematician who worked out the mathematical model for this kind of wave in 1911. It’s the fastest surface wave and moves the ground from side-to-side. Confined to the surface of the crust, Love waves produce entirely horizontal motion.
How do Rayleigh waves move?
A Rayleigh wave is a seismic surface wave causing the ground to shake in an elliptical motion, with no transverse, or perpendicular, motion.
How fast do seismic waves travel?
These waves can travel through any type of material, including fluids, and can travel nearly 1.7 times faster than the S-waves. In air, they take the form of sound waves, hence they travel at the speed of sound. Typical speeds are 330 m/s in air, 1450 m/s in water and about 5000 m/s in granite.
Can Rayleigh waves travel through gas?
These waves can travel through solids, liquids, and gases. There are two major kinds of surface waves: Love waves, which are shear waves trapped near the surface, and Rayleigh waves, which have rock particle motions that are very similar to the motions of water particles in ocean waves.
Can Rayleigh waves travel through water?
Love waves (do not propagate through water) can effect surface water only insofar as the sides of lakes and ocean bays pushing water sideways like the sides of a vibrating tank, whereas Rayleigh waves, becasuse of their vertical component of their motion can affect the bodies of water such as lakes.
Where do P-waves travel the fastest?
mantle
What is the characteristic of Rayleigh waves?
Rayleigh waves are surface waves first found by Rayleigh (1885). Particle motion of Rayleigh waves in a half-space is elliptical and retrograde at the surface. The amplitude attenuates with depth. Rayleigh waves are dispersive in a stratified half-space.
What are the characteristic of body waves?
A body wave is a seismic wave that moves through the interior of the earth, as opposed to surface waves that travel near the earth’s surface. P and S waves are body waves. Each type of wave shakes the ground in different ways.
What is the characteristics of Love waves?
Love waves are transverse and restricted to horizontal movement – they are recorded only on seismometers that measure the horizontal ground motion. Another important characteristic of Love waves is that the amplitude of ground vibration caused by a Love wave decreases with depth – they’re surface waves.
What is the characteristic of P waves?
P-waves travel through liquids and gases as well as through solids. Although liquids and gases have zero rigidity, they have compressibility, which enables them to transmit P-waves. Sound waves are P-waves moving through the air.
What is the relationship between S and P waves?
P waves travel faster than S waves, and are the first waves recorded by a seismograph in the event of a disturbance. P waves travel at speeds between 1 and 14 km per second, while S waves travel significantly slower, between 1 and 8 km per second.
What can P waves travel through?
P waves can travel through solids, liquids and gases. That’s one big difference between them and the other types of seismic waves, which typically travel only through solids (such as rock).
What is the meaning of P wave?
compressional wave