True or False?
- California is going to fall into the Pacific Ocean
- The San Andreas fault causes all California earthquakes
- California has more earthquakes and bigger earthquakes than anywhere else
- Psychics and animals predict earthquakes
- The ground opens up and swallows people during earthquakes
- We in California are waiting for the "BIG ONE"
And yes, my students, I will give you extra credit if you take notes!
 |
| Comic art provided by Zeo (THANKS!) |
6 comments:
I can't make it, but I'll take a stab just for fun. Maybe you can correct me after the presentation?
- California is going to fall into the Pacific Ocean
False
- The San Andreas fault causes all California earthquakes
False, there are many faults in CA(not including our politicians ;)
- California has more earthquakes and bigger earthquakes than anywhere else
False - but just a guess
- Psychics and animals predict earthquakes
False, but maybe some animals do sense them before we as individuals do. Warrants correlating youtube videos of cute kittens and dogs with USGS data.
- The ground opens up and swallows people during earthquakes
OMG, yes! (False)
- We in California are waiting for the "BIG ONE"
True, at least *a* big one
It's not normally until you're in grad school for seismology that you learn this, but I overheard a couple of doctoral students saying that everything east of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic Ocean.
That should jazz the conspiracy theorists who come across this.
Oh, heck, Lockwood. I was gonna try to keep that a secret. I've been buying up land in southern California....
* Psychics and animals predict earthquakes
This is a trick question. Psychics do make predictions. Can't really say about animals, but if they do I'd guess they'd be more accurate.
Psychics make predictions, but they're wrong most of the time, and correct only by chance.
Animals might sense an earthquake, but they can't talk. So if your dog is freaking out, is it an earthquake, or is the neighbor's dog in heat?
Bottom line, the answer to every question is "false"!
One note however -- when the Cascadia subduction zone cuts loose, we can then say that California (at least the northernmost part) gets magnitude 9 earthquakes just like Japan and Chile!
The only one partially true is the "Big One", as over a long enough time (geologic, not human) California getting an 8 or 9er increases in likelihood
Post a Comment