Download Linking Asteroids and Meteorites through Reflectance

Conversations with the Earth
Tom Burbine
[email protected]
Midterm
• March 24
• Covers everything including Tuesday-Wednesday
class
• You can bring in a sheet of paper with anything
written on it
• You can bring in your hand-written mineral sheets
Review Session
• Wednesday evening at 4:30 pm in Hemenway 229
• A 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred on March 11th
• Where?
• Aftershock is a smaller earthquake that occurs
after a previous large earthquake, in the same area
of the main shock
• Formed as the crust around the displaced fault
plane adjusts to the effects of the main shock.
Richter Scale Magnitude
• Logarithmic
• logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by
seismographs
• each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of
about 31.6 times the amount of energy released
How to imagine changes in
Richter Scale Magnitude?
• How did the Japanese seismic warning system
give residents an 80 second warning that an
earthquake would hit Japan?
• The boundary between Okhotsk Plate and Pacific
Plate is a subduction zone
• The Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Okhotsk
Plate
• Pacific Plate is the largest tectonic plate
• http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/0
3/japan-earthquake-makes-waves.html
• The quake moved portions of northeast Japan by
as much as 2.4 meters closer to North America
• A 400-kilometer stretch of coastline dropped
vertically by 0.6 m
http://manusrivastava.instablogs.com/entry/what-causes-a-tsunami
Tsunami
• Series of water waves caused by the displacement
of a large volume of a body of water
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific12769741
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific12778552
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrS1ITc2yF4
• http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/124586/20110319/j
apan-tsunami-earthquake-fukushima-noaa-dartvideos-photos-graphics.htm
• What is a Supermoon?
• Full or new moon that coincides with a close
approach by the Moon to the Earth
• Did Supermoon cause Japanese earthquake?
• Supermoon occurred March 19th
• Earthquake occurred March 11th
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-200449931.html?tag=mncol;txt
• Tides are strongest at full and new moons
• The earthquake and tsunami knocked out the
regular and backup cooling systems at the sixreactor Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
• Radioactivity – decay of an atomic nucleus
• All elements with an atomic number greater than
82 (lead) are radioactive
• Half-Life – time it takes for half of an amount of
radioactive material to decay
Any Questions?