Earthquakes and Moving Plates essays

Earthquakes and Moving Plates essays One day in my freshman year biology class, I felt the ground moving as if there has been an explosion. Soon after, I was under the table feeling like I was on a boat out in the sea. Despite the feeling of seasickness I was excited and felt privileged to experience the earthquake since it was something very rare. From that moment, how the earthquakes occur and what makes them vary from place to place came to my close attention. However, because of the devastating aftermath of earthquakes, sometimes it is very easy to ignore the real cause of the earthquakes but rather focus on the damage caused by the earthquakes. It is important to understand both the cause of an earthquake and how it affects human life as well as how to be prepared in order to minimize the harm. Many people are aware or heard of plate tectonics and its impact on the world. In fact, the plate tectonic is the main driving force for earthquakes occurring around the world. Then, it is crucial to understand how the moving plates generate earthquakes. The earth's surface, lithosphere, is a rigid shell, and underneath the lithosphere, there is a hot asthenosphere which "finds a weak place in the lithosphere to rise" (Louie 1). This convection process allows the lithosphere to move. In some cases, the continuously moving plates spread apart from each other, push against each other, or slide along next to each other, creating a fault (Lassieur 19). When the plates move toward each other, such as southern Alaska where the Pacific plate is subducting underneath the North American plate, the Earth's largest earthquakes, the 1964 Alaskan earthquake for example, are generally formed (A.S.G. 1). Usually, plates that are moving away from each other are situated in the deep oceans and generate relatively shallow earthquakes (A.S.G. 2). In cases of the plates sliding by each other, such as San Andreas fault in California, the movement may cause many damaging earthquakes. However,...