How does earthquakes travel?

Answer 1

Preceding an earthquake, stresses accumulate in the earth's crust over time, causing energy to be stored in the form of elastic strain (like that in a compressed spring). Ultimately this stress exceeds the shear strength of the crust in the fault zone causing a sudden brittle failure or rupture. This in turn causes movement and a sudden release of the stored elastic strain energy in the form of seismic waves (or shock waves).

Answer 2

Shockwaves from an earthquake are in some ways very similar to sound waves in the air. A molecule of air gets smacked by a neighbor and rebounds, smacking another neighbor in turn. Thus, a sound wave travels though the air. But the direction of the vibration of an air molecule is directly back-and-forth towards and away from the source of sound. This is called a compression wave. Air is a gas, though, and the ground isn't. So the ground molecules, since they are stuck together, can vibrate in other ways. For example, earthquakes can shake the ground sideways, not just back-and-forth. If you lay a long rope on the ground and shake one end sideways, a wave moves along the rope but the little pieces of the rope itself are actually moving sideways, perpendicular to the motion of the wave. Imagine this in 3-d. This is a shear wave. So an earthquake can cause several types of waves simultaneously, compression waves and elastic waves. Some other types can occur where the ground meets the air; surface waves. The surface waves are slower but often the most destructive.

Answer 3

A seismic wave is a wave of energy that travels through the Earth and away from an earthquake in all directions. When blocks of Earth move suddenly move, energy is released as seismic waves.

Since we got that out of the way, we need to focus on they way seismic waves travel.

First of all, there are several different kinds of seismic waves, and they all move in different ways. The two main types of waves are body waves and surface waves. Body waves can travel through the earth's inner layers, but surface waves can only move along the surface of the planet like ripples on water. Earthquakes radiate seismic energy as both body and surface waves.

Body Waves

The first kind of body wave is the P wave or primary wave. This is the fastest kind of seismic wave. The P wave can move through solid rock and fluids, like water or the liquid layers of the earth. It pushes and pulls the rock it moves through just like sound waves push and pull the air. Have you ever heard a big clap of thunder and heard the windows rattle at the same time? The windows rattle because the sound waves were pushing and pulling on the window glass, much like P waves push and pull on rock.

The second type of body wave is the S wave or secondary wave, (also called a shear wave) which is the second wave you feel in an earthquake. An S wave is slower than a P wave and can only move through solid rock, since liquids can't transmit the shearing motion. This wave moves rock up and down, or side-to-side, NOT both.

Surface Waves

The first kind of surface wave is called a Love wave. It's the fastest surface wave and moves the ground from side-to-side.

The other kind of surface wave is the Rayleigh wave. A Rayleigh wave rolls along the ground just like a wave rolls across a lake or an ocean. Because it rolls, it moves the ground up and down, and side-to-side in the same direction that the wave is moving. Most of the shaking felt from an earthquake is due to the Rayleigh wave, which can be much larger than the other waves.

BTW, the speed of a seismic wave depends upon the material it is moving through. The denser the material is, the faster the acoustic waves move.

Answer 4

Earthquakes travel in different forms of waves. When an earthquake strikes, the first wave to travel is the P-wave, which stands for primary waves. It moves in a motion that goes back back and forth horizontally like a spring. S-waves follow after P-waves. They move up and down, but it's not as intense as the surface waves that follow after it. The surface waves move like ropes that are flung so that the energy can move from one end to the other end (basically a rope that u flick and make big waves of). Surface waves doesn't just shake the ground like p and s waves; they actually cause the ground to wave, therefore causing more damage.

Answer 5

Th shockwaves travel by the air. The ground is soo gay that it messes up

Answer 6

Seismic waves travel through the earth as body waves and surface waves. Body waves travel through the inside of the earth and surface waves travel along the surface of the earth.

Answer 7

Through earthquakes

hope i helped :)

Answer 8

When you throw a rock into a pond, waves ripple outward from the spot where the rock hits the water. the energy released by an earthquake travels in a similar way through Earth.

Answer 9

Earthquakes travel across the world by the wind.

Answer 10

Earthquake waves travel in all directions.