Earthquakes (B1)
Section outline
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An earthquake is one of the worst natural disasters on our Earth. We think that the ground we stand on is very stable, but it isn’t. It moves quite a lot. In the last few decades, scientists have been able to find out why earthquakes happen.
Earthquakes happen when there is a sudden vibration in the Earth’s crust. It’s like a large lorry that travels down your street. When it passes by, you feel your house shake.
Earthquakes can be caused by a lot of things :- Volcanoes that suddenly erupt
- Meteorites that hit the earth
- Underground explosions
- Buildings that fall apart
But most earthquakes happen because the Earth’s plates move.In the middle of the 20th century scientists found out that continents do not always stay in the same place. They have been moving on plates for millions of years. The Earth’s surface is made up of many such plates. Where two plates meet magma comes out of the inner part of the Earth . These areas are called faults—breaks in the Earth’s crust.
Map of earthquakes 1900 - 2017 and their magnitudes
Image: Phoenix7777Own workOpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia CommonsWords
- caused by = the reason for something
- century = a period of a hundred years
- crust = the top part of the Earth
- decade = ten years
- disaster = when something very dangerous happens and a lot of people die
- fall apart = collapse
- fault = where two plates meet
- erupt = to break out or explode
- lorry = a car that carries lots of goods
- magma = rock in the inner part of the Earth that is liquid
- meteorite = a piece of rock or metal from space that has landed on Earth
- plate = one of the very large sheets of rock that form the surface of the Earth
- stable = here: it doesn’t move
- sudden = unexpected, quick
- surface = the top layer
- vibration = shaking
