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What Is An Earthquake?

As well as earthquakes happening at ridges, they can happen at hot spots. The way this works is that on a certain part of a diverging plate the crust might experience a tensional force and the crust in return will get thinner and weaker. Magma will eventually break through the surface and form volcanos. If by chance a hot spot occurs under this weak part of the crust then the magma might provide the extra needed pressure to force the magma to the surface. This motion of the magma forcing itself to the surface will cause small earthquakes since it fractures the crust on its way up. Overall we can see that in diverging zones earthquakes tend to be frequent since the crust is constantly changing but because tension doesn't build up for long and it gets dispersed along the boundary the magnitude of the earthquakes are relatively small. The relationship between the focus and epicenter at these points is that they are relatively close. This is because the quakes originate at the surface of the crust where the rifting and divergence is happening. Another form of earthquake is a converging plate boundary (3) where one plate collides with another plate. Converging can happen in three different ways between two or more different plates. One of the ways is a continental-continental collision; the second is an oceanic-oceanic collision and finally an oceanic-continental collision. In this types of boundary one of the plates, the more dense one, sub ducts under another. Earthquakes at converging plate boundaries occur at any point where one of the plates is sub ducting under the other. This is because the plates are not smooth and some parts interlock with each other and build stress. As the force of friction grows bigger than the force the plates can sustain they shift a relatively large distance in a minor interval. It is obvious that this type of collision deals with two continental plates coming together to form mountains.


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