Colorgeo

Classroom for Geology and Disaster

How to find an epicenter of an earthquake

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How to find an epicenter of an earthquake? The epicenter is the point on the ground surface of a focus of the earthquake beneath the ground. Before going to this lecture of the practical examination we have to know the basic seismic wave of an earthquake. The basic seismic waves are two types those are body wave and surface wave

The body wave are the p wave and the s-wave. The p-wave can pass through all the medium like gas, and water etc. Bu the S-wave cant pas through the liquid. The velocity of the p-wave are 6 km/sec where as the s-wave and the velocity is the 3-4 Km/sec. The P wave move through the back and forth motion and s- wave move with transverse motion. The surface wave are the slower motion of wave. These waves are more destructive. There is a time gap between the arrival time of the body wave and the surface wave. The people can scape between this time as the big destructive wave is coming to collapse the building.

How to calculate the epicenter of an earthquake

Step1: Find the distance of travel time on the seismogram

Step2: Calculate the distance of the amplitude of an earthquake on the seismogram.

Step 3: Fit the distance on the right side of the model and check the distance on the left side which is the distance of an earthquake from that seismic center.

Step 4: Fit the amplitude on the other vertical line to find the magnitude of an earthquake.

Step 5: Work done Do the same process of the other seismogram data of the different location

Step6: Draw the circle with the distance data of each seismogram. Find the intersection of the three-circle drawn. the intersection point is the epicenter of that earthquake of a certain magnitude.

Step 7: Final work done.

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