Tiger Teng 1/31/12

Eastern quakes can trigger big quakes

Oklahoma experienced a magnitude of 5.6 on a earthquake out of more than 2 dozen earthquakes in the first week of November 2011.Researchers and scientist uses very sensitive electronic devices called seismometers to detect and measure the size of ground vibrations produced by earthquakes. They estimated several million earthquakes rattle the globe each year but many of them are very small magnitude. Earthquakes can happen anywhere in the world, but really big quakes happen along the edges of Earths tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are huge pieces of Earths crust that are like jigsaw puzzles. Today, scientists are still puzzling over why the quakes occur and when similar ones might occur.

Risky Business
California and Alaska experience the most powerful and amount of earthquakes in all of United States because the states are on the tectonic plate boundaries. The New Madrid Seismic Zone is a zone that stretches from near Memphis, Tennessee to near St. Louis. 3 Powerful waves stuck the New Madrid Seismic Zone 200 years ago that caused the change in the mighty Mississippis flow and it even created a brand new lake. Scientist has studied this region and found that on average this will occur every 500 years. If this quake were to occur right now the cost would be between $80 to $250 billion if it were near Memphis.

East vs. West

Researchers arent sure how far west the quakes were felt, because not many people lived west of the Mississippi River at the time. Scientists give several reasons for big differences in quake impacts. Many of the secrets lie in Earths crust, says Robert Williams, a scientist with the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. Some scientists have proposed that the New Madrid quakes occurred because Earths crust is flexing there. Thousands of years ago, during the most recent ice age, large amounts of ice covered eastern Canada and the northern fringes of the northeaster US and then it melted so large amount of weight disappeared. So the scientist suspect, Earths crust is now slowly bouncing back, just like a trampoline bounces back to flat after a person standing in the center of the trampoline steps off the net.

Main Idea
Earthquakes can happen anywhere but really big quakes happen along the edges of Earths tectonic plates which are like puzzle pieces of the Earths crust. California and Alaska experience the most powerful and amount of earthquakes in all of United States because the two states are on the plate boundaries.