Reasons for Earthquakes

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Earthquakes

Earthquake is one of the natural calamities. Its origin can be traced to the early days of earth formation. It is responsible for a lot of damage to living and non-living beings. For many centuries man didn’t know why earthquakes occur and how they occur and to what extent they would damage. He only felt that mother earth was angry with him and so caused the earthquake and he always feared it.

It was left to Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, to relate the phenomenon of earthquake to physical factors. According to Aristotle, when the air compressed within the arch escapes, it shakes some part of the land. This emission is called volcanic activity. When the volcano bursts, lots of lava, gas etc come out of the earth and fail out. This causes pressure and imbalance and results in producing earthquake waves in the surrounding areas. It was thus identified that volcanic activity is one of the reasons for earthquakes. The volcanic activity results in faulting. To fill up the new faults the movement of earth takes place. This causes tremor.

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The second reason is isocratic adjustment. The surface of the earth has certain raised up blocks and certain depressed blocks. They keep the balance of the earth, when it moves revolving on units of axis. These raised up blocks are washed down due to various reasons and cause imbalance. Then also the earthquakes occur to regain and maintain that balance.

We could therefore see that earthquakes commonly occur in volcano prime areas and under the feet of hills and mountains, no well settle Earthquakes frequently occur in China, Japan, Philippines, southern parts of the Himalayas, volcano prime parts of Europe ...

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