Earthquakes

Susan M Briggs1

  • 1International Trauma and Disaster Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, 8 Hawthorne Place, Suite 114, Boston, MA 02114, USA. sbriggs@partners.org

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Travelling Waves01:04

Travelling Waves

A wave is a disturbance that propagates from its source, repeating itself periodically, and is typically associated with simple harmonic motion. Mechanical waves are governed by Newton's laws and require a medium to travel. A medium is a substance in which a mechanical wave propagates, and the medium produces an elastic restoring force when it is deformed.
Water waves, sound waves, and seismic waves are some examples of mechanical waves. For water waves, the wave propagation medium is water;...
Modes of Standing Waves - I01:03

Modes of Standing Waves - I

A close look at earthquakes provides evidence for the conditions appropriate for resonance, standing waves, and constructive and destructive interference. A building may vibrate for several seconds with a driving frequency matching the building's natural frequency of vibration; this produces a resonance that results in one building collapsing while the neighboring buildings do not. Often, buildings of a certain height are devastated, while other taller buildings remain intact. This phenomenon...
Fault Types01:18

Fault Types

When analyzing a single line-to-ground fault from phase A to ground at a three-phase bus, it is important to consider the fault impedance. This impedance is zero for a bolted fault, equal to the arc impedance for an arcing fault, and represents the total fault impedance for a transmission-line insulator flashover. To derive sequence and phase currents, fault conditions are translated from the phase domain to the sequence domain.
For line-to-line faults occurring between phases B and C, the...
Energy and Power of a Wave00:58

Energy and Power of a Wave

The total energy associated with a wavelength is the sum of the potential energy and the kinetic energy. The average rate of energy transfer associated with a wave is called its power, which is total energy divided by the time it takes to transfer the energy. For a sinusoidal wave, energy and power are proportional to the square of both the amplitude and the angular frequency.
Waves can also be concentrated or spread out, as characterized by the intensity of the wave. Intensity is directly...
Microcracking in Concrete01:20

Microcracking in Concrete

Microcracking in concrete refers to the tiny cracks that can form within the material even before any external load is applied. These microcracks typically occur at the interface between the coarse aggregate and the hydrated cement paste, often as a result of differential volume changes prompted by variations in stress-strain behavior, as well as thermal and moisture movement. Initially, these microcracks remain stable and do not grow substantially until the concrete is stressed to about 30...
Acceleration due to Gravity on Earth01:21

Acceleration due to Gravity on Earth

According to Newton's law of gravitation, the gravitational force on a body is proportional to its mass. According to Newton's second law of motion, the acceleration produced by an external force is inversely proportional to the force. Hence, the acceleration of an object under an external force of gravitation is independent of its mass.
The acceleration of an object close to the Earth, because of the Earth's gravitational pull, is called the acceleration due to gravity. It is always directed...