Introduction to Earthquakes

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Potential Final Exam Essays

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I reserve an option to modify the wording of these questions on the exam (i.e. improve grammar, clarity, etc.). I encourage you to use cartoons and diagrams to help you illustrate the ideas &endash; but you should practice drawing them before you have to perform in an exam situation.

All answers must be in your own words - don't just copy verbatum from the course notes!

• What should you do during an earthquake if you are in a vehicle, in a building, or outside?
• Describe and discuss the scientific problem-solving method. Give a thorough example of using the same ideas to solve a common nonscientific problem (such as identifying the cause of a failure in a portable stereo).
• Given a sequence of items such as playing cards, compose a set of hypotheses to explain the "pattern" in the sequence. For each hypothesis, clearly identify the predictions for the next item and which additional items would support or nullify the hypothesis.
• List the basic groupings of fallible or "bad" arguments and describe at least one specific ex-ample from each category. Then list the traits of sound critical evaluation.
• Describe the principle of universality and it's role in science; outline the development of the principle using examples from the history of science.
• Discuss the origin of the elements and provide a brief description of the processes that syn-thesize the main groups of elements. Discuss how the manufacture of elements is reflected in the major features in the curve of element abundance.
• Construct a diagram of Earth, label the major divisions in it's structure, and list the primary chemical elements that compose each division.
• Describe the intensity of shaking produced by earthquakes, how we measure it, and the fac-tors that can influence the shaking intensity level. Be prepared to intelligently discuss the se-lection of a site for a "critical structure" (power plant, hospital, highway, etc.) given a map delineating the near-surface rock and soil distribution and earthquake or fault locations.
• Describe the Elastic Rebound Model of earthquake occurrence. Be sure to mention stress, strain, periodicity, the relative time between earthquakes compared with earthquake duration, the problems associated with the simple model, and how it compares with observed earth-quake cycles.
• Describe the construction of magnetic time scales and how they are used to estimate the age of the ocean. Be sure to mention the nature of Earth's magnetic field and the affects magnetic fields have on rocks.
• Briefly describe the plate tectonic hypothesis and illustrate the basic structure of a plate. Then discuss the nature of earthquake activity and the style of faulting you expect to find at the three types of plate boundaries.
• Describe seismic recording systems.
• Describe the propagation of seismic waves in Earth.
• Describe Earth's structure (in detail).
• Discuss the different measures of earthquake size.