What is an Earthquake?
Earthquakes are caused by the vibration of the Earth's crust, and usually occur on the boundaries between the Earth's tectonic plates. When enough pressure is built up between the plates, one plate "jolts", and releases all of the built up energy into the crust as seismic waves. 50,000 earthquakes occur around the world every year, but a large majority of them cannot be felt by humans, and only by very precise and sensitive seismometers. At this moment in time, we have no way of predicting when the event of an earthquake will happen, only where. The ground under out feet is under constant stress from pressure. All of this pressure must be released somehow in the form of an earthquake. An earthquake is the sudden movement of tectonic plates, usually along fault lines, which are the barriers between two or more plates