the mediatheque did not collapse.

It stood firm against the massive seismic forces that were tearing other buildings apart; the basic structure did not fail. Surviving an Earthquake By Kealey Gill Recently renound architect Toyo Ito won the Pritzker Prize in the field of architecture for his amazing building known as the Sendai Mediatheque. The Mediatheque is a library in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. This earthquake was a magnitude of 9.03. Moment magnitude describes the relative amount of energy released during an earth quake. A magnitude of 9 on the Mercalli intensity scale is described as causing considerable damage in specially designated structures; buildings shifted off foundations; ground cracked conspicuously. Magnitudes are calculated on a logarithmic scale, with an energy increase from one magnitude to the next of about 32 times. The difference in size between small earthquakes (magnitudes less than 3) and large earthquakes (magnitudes 7 and higher) is enormous. Moment magnitude is now the most commonly used scale to describe the size of large earthquakes. Because the method of calculation varies among the magnitude scales, slightly different magnitude numbers are often reported for the same earthquake.

The 2011 earthquake was the most powerful known earthquake ever to have hit japan. Sendai was the nearest city to the earthquake. The earthquake occurred where the Pacific Plate is subducting under the plate beneath northern Honshu. The earthquake released a surface energy dissipated as shaking and tsunamic energy. Surface energy is the excess energy at the surface of a material compared to the bulk. The energy released in an earthquake moves through earth in several different kinds of seismic waves that originate at the center of fault motion, called the focus of the earthquake. These waves travel outward in widening circles, like ripples produced when a rock is thrown into a pond, gradually diminishing in amplitude with increasing distance from the focus. The strongest shocks, and greatest crustal vibration, are often felt on the ground directly above the focus, at the location known as the epicenter of the earthquake. The main earthquake was preceded by a number of foreshocks with hundreds of aftershocks reported. The

This multipurpose building houses a library and an art gallery. The reason it caught so much attention is that it withstood the catastrophic earthquake of March 11, 2011. The building shook and swayed violently; everything cascaded from shelves and desks onto the floor, the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Ceiling panels appeared to swing drunkly overhead. But

first major foreshock was a 7.2 Mw event on March 9 approximately 40 km from the epicenter of the March 11 earthquake. The designation of an earthquake as foreshock, mainshock, and is only possible after the event. They occur from a matter of minutes to days or even longer before the main shock. Foreshock is an earthquake that occurs before a larger seismic event (the mainshock) and is related to it in both time and space. Aftershock is a smaller earthquake that occurs after a previous large earthquake, in the same area of the mainshock. If an aftershock is larger than the mainshock, the aftershock is redesignated as the mainshock and the original

mainshock is redesignated as the foreshock. Aftershocks are formed as the crust around the displaced fault plane adjusts to the effects of the mainshock. Can you believe that the Sendai Mediatheque withstood all of that?! What an amazing building is must be! Works Cited: Hess, Darrel. McKnights Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation Tenth Edition. P377-380; p 408-411. The Pacific Plate. Wikipedia, 2013.org.20 Mar 2013. Lithosphere facts, information,

pictures.Encyclopedia, 2003.com.20 Mar 2013 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsumani.Wikipedia, 2011.org. 20 Mar 2013 Toyo Ito wins Pritzker Architecture Prize.nytimes,2013.com. 20 Mar 2013 Plate Tectonics. Encyclopedia, 2002.com. 20 Mar 2013 2011.3.11 Earthquake Japan.youtube,2011.com 20 Mar 2013 Japan Earthquake 9.0 Buildings swaying.youtube,2011.com. 20 Mar 2013