What makes earthquakes occur?

Question

What makes earthquakes occur?

Answer 1

The movement of continental plates.

Answer 2

Plate techtonics.  Shifting fault lines essentially.   Active volcanoes can too.

Answer 3

Moving of tetonic plates underground. They move, and the collide. When they try to break apart, they cause friction, and cause shaking, which causes earthquakes

Answer 4

you obviously dont pay attention do you?

Answer 5

plates shifting umm valcanos erupting umm cracks in the ocean.

Answer 6

Shifting of tectonic plates

Answer 7

The Earth's tectonic plates shifting.

Answer 8

um, the plates in the earth, when they collide together they create mountains and sumtimes volcanoes (tho volcanoes are made a different way to)

Answer 9

The earth is made up of plates and when they shift against each other then a grinding takes place causing earthquakes.

Answer 10

The earth is made up of many plates. Not the plates you eat on but, VERY LARGE pieces of solid rock..! Think of putting grahm crackers over hot oatmeal. They slowly move. Just like the plates that make up the earth. The earth is like a jig-saw puzzle. The pieces of rock move and sometimes they get stuck together. When there is too much pressure, BOOM!!! An earthquake!!! The vibrations and sounds of this event travel through the ground, and cause the ground to rumble,rock, and shake!!! Little ones occur aroundd the world everyday. Big ones happen about once every 1-2 weeks. The deeper the earthquakes occur the less the ground shakes.

   Faults are cracks in the earth that divide to masses of rock and these rocks move against eachother. When they get finally snap and release all that energy, theres an earthquake. Try rubbing to bricks together, slowly. WHat happens??? It snaps!!! Or snap your fingers. Your middle finger and your thumb are pieces of rock and the crack that seperates them is the fault. The snap is the earthquake, methaphorically speaking. So there you have it!!!

Answer 11

An earthquake occurs when plates beneath the earth shift, and it shakes the earth violently while one is unevenly trying to movve undr or over the other.

Answer 12

When the earth's plate starts moving away from each other which makes the ground move. Also, it can also happen if a volcano is gonna erupt, but that only happens if you live by volcanos.

Answer 13

Sometimes Volcanoes or Meteor Showers.

The other planets and stars Make earthquakes occur.

Answer 14

the asthenosphere under the lithosphere is a liqued and sence the earth is rotating it moves the asthenonsphere and it moves the lithosphere which is also called the plate tectonics and the plates seperate which causes earthquakes

Answer 15

Earth Quakes are caused by large tectonic plates under the earth. When these plates pass each other and shift suddenly an earth quake occurs.

Answer 16

Two tectonic plates rubbing, so earthquakes occur along the vault lines.

Answer 17

the sliding/shifting of techtonic plates....lol sliding shifting hhmmm dirty XD

Answer 18

Lava in under the crust moves in convection currents. Floating on this lava are tectonic plates, so these move too. They hit into each other causing earthquakes. This is quite a simplified version though.

Answer 19

The rock and roll of this band... http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fus...

Answer 20

techtonic plates shifting

Answer 21

techtonic plates smacking up against each other.

Answer 22

The shifting of tectonic plates in the Earth...

Answer 23

The earth's crust is divided into several major plates, some 50 miles thick, which move slowly and continuously over the earth's interior.

Most earthquakes occur as the result of slowly accumulating pressure that causes the ground to slip abruptly along a geological fault plane on or near a plate boundary. The resulting waves of vibration within the earth create ground motion at the surface that vibrates in a very complex manner.

The point where the fault first slips is the "focus" or "hypocenter" of the earthquake.

Answer 24

When Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks someone to the face and they strike the ground with massive downward force

Answer 25

tectonic plates shifting around

Answer 26

what makes earthquakes occur is when to plates go together from the pressure.....its called plate tectonics

you can look it up on the internet

http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/...

this is the site my teacher had us go on when she was teaching us about it

Answer 27

The movement of tectonic plates that are in the earth.

An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth, called a fault. Within seconds, an earthquake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years. ...

The size of an earthquake is indicated by a number called its magnitude. Magnitude is calculated from a measurement of either the amplitude or the duration of specific types of recorded seismic waves. Magnitude is determined from measurements made from seismograms and not on reports of shaking or interpretations of building damage. ... The intensity of and earthquake is a measure of the amount of ground shaking at a particular site, and it is determined from reports of human reaction to shaking, damage done to structures, and other effects. ...

Earth scientists believe that most earthquakes are caused by slow movements inside the Earth that push against the Earth's brittle, relatively thin outer layer, causing the rocks to break suddenly. This outer layer is fragmented into a number of pieces, called plates. Most earthquakes occur at the boundaries of these plates. In Washington State, the small Juan de Fuca plate off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and northern California is slowly moving eastward beneath a much larger plate that includes both the North American continent the land beneath part of the Atlantic Ocean. Plate motions in the Pacific Northwest result in shallow earthquakes widely distributed over Washington and deep earthquakes in the western parts of Washington and Oregon. The movement of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the North America plate is in many respects similar to the movements of plates in South America, Mexico, Japan, and Alaska, where the world's largest earthquakes occur

Answer 28

plates shifting beneath the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake

Answer 29

The Earth's crusts shifting.  They are always shifting and when they shift, tension builds up until one day, it releases it's tension resulting in an earthquake

Answer 30

a magical thing called tectonic plates

Answer 31

the movement of tectonic plates