An earthquake can be compared to a water drop that is suspended from a faucet and falls into a pool creating ripples. Like the drop that falls, earthquakes result from the sudden conversion of potential energy, stored elastically in rocks, to kinetic energy. Then, like the ripples on water, the released energy travels outward in all directions, including through the Earth, as seismic waves.
Seismic waves propagate by temporarily deforming the ground. Sensitive instruments called seismometers can detect and record these ground changes. This visual analogy shows how the ground deformed as seismic waves spread outward from an earthquake that occurred near Wells, Nevada on February 28, 2008. To create this visual, recordings from nearly 400 seismic stations have been combined. To learn more: [ Ссылка ]
