Vocabulary Chapter 10 Flashcards
The series of smaller earthquakes that follow a major earthquake.
aftershock
Seismic waves that pass through the interior of the earth.
body wave

Waves in which particals move back and forth parrallel to the direction that the wave moves.
Compressional Waves (p-waves)

The amount of movement of slip across a fault plane.
Displacement

A vibration caused by the sudden breaking or frictional sliding of rock in the earth.
Earthquake
The concept that earthquakes happen because stress builds up, causing rock adjacent to a fault to bend elastically until breaking and slip on a fault occus; the slip relaxes the elastic bending and decreases stress.
elastic rebound theory

The point on the surface of the Earth directly above the focus of an earthquake.
epicenter

A fracture on which one body of rock slides past another.
fault

Gradual movement along a fault that occurs in absense of an earthquake.
fault creep
A small step on the ground surface where one side of a fault has moved vertically with respect to the other.
fault scarp

The intersection between a fault and the ground surface.
fault trace
The location where a fault slips during and earthquake.
focus (hypocenter)

The series of smaller erathquakes that precede a major earthquake.
foreshock
Resistance to sliding on a surface
friction
Siesmic events caused by the actions of people. (like fracking)
induced seismicity
A measure of the relative size of an earthquake at a location by measuring the damage it caused.
intensity
Earthquakes that occur away from plate boundaries
intraplate earthquake
The number that represense the maximum amplitude of ground motion that would be measured by a seismometer placed a certain distance away from the epicenter of an earthquake.
magnitude
An earthquake characterization scale based on the samount of damage that the earthquake causes.
Modified Mercalli Scale
The average time betweeen successive geological events.
recurrence interval
A scale that defines earthquakes on hte basis of the amplitude of the largest ground motion recorded on a seismogram.
Richter Scale
When pressure in the water in the pores push sediment grains apart so that they become surrounded by water and no longer rest against each other, and the sediment becomes able to flow like a liquid.
sediment liquefaction (liquefaction)
The relatively narrow strips of crust on earth that most earthquakes occur in.
seismic belts (siesmic zones)

Earthquake activity
seismicity





