• Question: What causes an earthquakes to happen?

    Asked by Thejoez07 to Ted, S. S., Laura, Kevin, Ellen, Andrea on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Ellen Simmons

      Ellen Simmons answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      Earthquakes are generally caused by a shifting in tectonic plates in the Earth’s crust, underneath the ground that we can see. The plates shift because of the heat within the Earth’s core, which causes molten rock to move underneath the plates. These plates move around and bump against each other, and sometimes these bumps can be felt on the Earth’s surface.

      Cities that are positioned above a gap between these tectonic plates (called “fault lines”) are more likely to have earthquakes, as they are above an area where plates will bump together a lot.

    • Photo: Andrea Pacheco

      Andrea Pacheco answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      The surface of the earth is mostly water, the solid part is what we can call the ground, and when this massive mass is displaced or disrupted, it generates a seismic wave. Imagine the ground is a towel over a flat surface and you shake it with your hand up and down, as there is a wave propagating along the towel when the ground shakes a similar wave propagates and that creates the earthquake.

    • Photo: Ted Burke

      Ted Burke answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      Underneath the ground, the Earth’s crust is broken up into giant plates called tectonic plates. Some of these are enormous – potentially as large as an entire continent. The Earth’s “mantle”, which is beneath the crust, is very heat and the energy of this heat causes the tectonic plates to move around. When tectonic plates press against each other, enormous tensions can build up which is released when the plates suddenly slide relative to each other. That releases an enormous shock wave, which we experience on the Earth’s surface as an earthquake. Some places in the world experience a lot of earthquakes because they’re located above a line where two tectonic plates meet – what we call a “fault line”. In Ireland, we rarely experience earthquakes and when we do they’re only quite small tremors because we’re not near a fault line where the quakes actually occur.

    • Photo: Kevin OBrien

      Kevin OBrien answered on 12 Mar 2019:

      This isn’t my area of expertise.
      There’s nothing I can add to the answers the other engineers have provided.

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