Earthquakes occur in
certain ways. One is when the plates collide, or they may rub together. This
plate movement creates a fault. The San Andres Fault is the largest fault in the
world. When there is a fault and continuous plate movement an earthquake will
occur.
Did you
know that more than one million earthquakes occur a year, or that we can predict
a huge earthquake days or weeks ahead. Did you know a plate moves 3 inches a year? The same forces cause earthquakes as
volcanoes. Not all earthquakes cause damage or kill people. During some
earthquakes sand boils and bubbles and creates mud volcanoes. Four out of five of
the world’s earthquakes occur on the rim of the Pacific Ocean. Earthquakes
occur mostly around Italy, Greece, and Turkey is the earthquake zone.
A seismograph measures the magnitude of an earthquake. The Mercali Intensity scale measures the effects of an earthquake.
Some earthquakes can give warnings, some don’t. A person who studies earthquakes is a seismologist. The largest earthquake ever recorded was a 9.2. The only places that have never recorded an earthquake are southern Florida, Texas, and Alabama.
