Earth Science Current Event #2
Fountain,
Henry. "Decoding a Tsunami's Source." Nytimes.com. New York Times, 9
Dec. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
In 2011, there was a very strong
earthquake off the coast of Japan which ended up causing a large tsunami. Scientists have recently been trying to
figure out why the waves of this tsunami were so large. They found out that during the earthquake,
the seafloor near the fault ended up moving 50 meters which in turn moved a
great amount of water. This movement was
actually the largest ever recorded and really surprised scientists. It was surprising because scientists didn’t
think that this earthquake would have happened so close to the surface of the
sea floor. They thought that this large
of a slip in the subduction zone would have happened much farther under the sea
floor, therefore creating a much less strong earthquake. After finding out this strange information,
scientists decided to go on a deep sea drilling expedition approximately where
the earthquake originally happened.
Through this drilling, they found out that the probable reason for this
earthquake happening at the top of the sea floor was because the fault it was
on was very weak and slippery. While
digging about half a mile into this fault, scientists took many observations of
the fault. They put a sensor into one of
the holes drilled and used it to take the temperature of the fault, which is
something no one had ever done before.
Through the sensors, scientists measured how much the temperature fell
in the fault over a period of nine months.
From this information, how much frictional heat came from the earthquake
and found out that there was resistance when the fault moved during the
earthquake. Also, other researchers
found out that the reason why the fault was weak was because it was composed of
“fine clay sediments.”
These discoveries are very relevant
because through this data, scientists can now figure out how potentially
destructive other faults in the world are.
For example, Patrick Fulton, a researcher at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, wants to know do similar testing on the Cascadia
fault. “We want to know if Cascadia and
other places have a risk of such a large tsunami.” Cascadia is a fault that is off the
northwestern United States and Canada.
It is very important for us to know the kind of earthquake this fault
could create so we can start figuring out how to prepare for a tsunami that
could hit the coast of California.
This article had a lot of great new
information in it about the Japan earthquake of 2011. Even though this event isn’t very “current”,
all the data scientists wrote about in this article was all new and still
extremely relevant to today. I really
like how they included how this new technology not only helped out with the
mystery of the Japan earthquake but how it can now help out with other possible
earthquakes that are a bit more relevant to us in the United States. I wish that the article had talked a little
more about the discoveries because the evidence they talked about was a bit
vague and it was hard to understand why this information is such a big
deal. Overall, I did enjoy this article
and I think many of my other classmates should read it since it has new
information about the Japan earthquake which we recently talked about in class.
I really like how your paragraph is well written and you explain your topic in a simple way. You took a very complicated event and explained it easily. I also liked how you added a quote to your paragraph. I did not know that a team of scientists went on a drilling expedition to discover new information about this earthquake. It is interesting that this was the first time scientists recorded the temperature of a fault and could use that information to see how it fell over a period of nine months. I would have added more background information on earthquakes and how the faults created them.
ReplyDeleteThis review was amazing. There were numerous things that were very well written. For example, the author was able to successfully set the scene in which the topic of the article took place. The time place and event were all given, and a clear explanation was provided in order for the reader to understand what would be being talked about in this review. In other words, it was a good way of introducing the topic at hand. Also, I believe that author did an excellent job of explaining how this topic is relevant to our lives. Finally, I think that the writer did a particularly well job of providing various examples of why this particular scenario was so significant. For example, she included how scientists did not expect the earthquake to be so close to the surface of the sea floor. One thing that really amazed me was that the sea floor near the fault moved 50 meters! That is just incredible. I also did not know that, if the fault was weak and slippery, it would cause the earthquake's intensity to change. Overall, I think this was a very good review, but the article was on an event that occurred in 2011, which is a pretty long time ago.
ReplyDeleteThis review was really well written. I really liked all the background information on the 2011 earthquake which helps to tell about this new discovery. The information about the setting in Japan and the time of this occurrence were also given, along with information regarding the digging expedition itself. I also liked how you included a very good connecting paragraph about how this affects us: it can help us monitor the fault to predict earthquakes; especially since this information could really help California! Finally, I thought that you did a good job of explaining how this old story is still relevant since that data and discovery is new. I think many people might find this article outdated if they didn't know that it had more information about this new discovery than the earthquake itself. I was very surprised at how much the fault moved (50 meters), and i liked how you told about how scientists too found this shocking. I learned that you can use the temperature of the fault to measure the temperature over a period of nine months and then determine the frictional heat from the earthquake. I thought that you could have talked about how deep this earthquake was because you mentioned that "scientists didn't think that this earthquake would have happened so close to the surface of the seafloor," but you never mentioned how close. Overall, i thought that this review was very informative, and I will look out to see if the new discovery will make any impacts regarding California.
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