Sunday, March 7, 2010

The Effects of Quakes

As we all know, the Chilean earhtquake was in fact of a higher magnitude than that of the one in Haiti, but as the article linked in the title mentions, the one in Haiti was more devastating due to the location of buildings in affected region and the way they were built. The effects of an earthquake have to do with a lot more than just the mere magnitude. Post quake occurrences such as large ocean waves can add much more devastation to an affected region. In the article, it is mentioned that one of Chile's largest oil refineries could be down for more than a month due to the earthquake.

Another interesting thing this article talks about, is how such large earthquakes, and other natural disasters, can affect the time span of a day, and what that means when all such occurrences are accounted for over thousands of years. What's surprising is that scientists say that the effect of the Chilean earthquake on the time of day won't actually have much of an effect in the long run because it will eventually be canceled out by other factors. I suggest reading the article if you want to find out more about this because it actually is pretty interesting.

2 comments:

Joshua Lu said...

Thanks Sabrina. That's really interesting. I guess I was so used to connecting the magnitude of an earthquake to its effect that I didn't realize all the other factors that go into the effects of an earthquake.
I think the earthquake in Haiti was also more devastating because Haiti is smaller right?

-Joshua Lu

Britney Tsao said...

Does the size of Haiti matter? I just thought the construction of the buildings in Haiti were less advanced and that's why the effects of the earthquake were so devastating, but I might be wrong (:
Interesting article though! I agree with Josh, I normally correlate magnitude with effects but now I see that there are a lot of factors that go into it. I never knew soft soil v. rock was something to consider with earthquakes, although it's kind of common sense.. I just never though of it.