Please help ASAP

Name ______________________________

In this activity, you will access the ground shaking hazard and potential damage to your home from an earthquake of a certain magnitude.

Earthquakes cause the ground surface to move in many different directions. The change of velocity in the ground surface during shaking is called acceleration. Buildings (and people) experience acceleration as a force pushing on them. High accelerations are more damaging to buildings then low accelerations and high accelerations lead to higher intensity of damage at a given location. As a result, engineers are very interested in determining the peak ground acceleration (PGA) probable in a location, so they can design structures to withstand the potential shaking. Acceleration values are reported in %g of gravity.

1. To find the Peak Ground Acceleration, please visit the following website:

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/interactive/

1. To find the Peak Ground Acceleration for your home address, click the button that says, “Choose Location Using Map” and the enter your address (or just find it on the map). Once you’ve found your address, click “Use this Location”. You will receive a couple of options for the Time Horizon that we can use to calculate Peak ground acceleration. Use the “10% in 50 years” time horizon and click the button that says, “Compute Hazard Curve”. You will see two graphs that look like those below. One the graph on the right, there is a box with the term Ground Motion (g) listed. The number listed in this box is your PGA.

1. What is your zip code? _____________

What is the PGA value? ___________ g

What does this mean? It means that there is a 10% probability that the Peak Ground Acceleration will exceed this value in the next 50 years!

Let’s find out what these acceleration values mean to your home in terms of the intensity of shaking and potential damage. Start by finding the Mercalli Scale Intensity Equivalent for the PGA determined above. You can look at the Mercalli Scale at this website: https://www.usgs.gov/natural-hazards/earthquake-hazards/science/modified-mercalli-intensity-scale?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

The table below compares the PGA value to the mercalli chart.

1. What Modified Mercalli Scale Intensity does the PGA determined in #3 equate to:

___________________

1. Write the Mercalli Scale description of this shaking.

Potential Damage to Your Home

You can find out more about the possible damage to your home by looking for information specific to the type of building you live in. The San Francisco bay area has created a guide and quiz to help you learn about the potential sources of damage to your home. First, you’ll need to identify the type of housing that you are living in. This guide is designed for San Francisco, so your exact home type may not be listed. If you can’t find a perfect match to your home, just use whatever seems reasonable. The guide to identifying your housing type is found in the content section of the course under “Earthquake Field Guide”

https://millersville.desire2learn.com/d2l/le/content/3040979/viewContent/24803249/View

1. Building type of your home: _________________________________________

1. Based on the construction of your home, what common problems are likely to occur in your home as a result of severe earthquake shaking? Does your home contain any of the weaknesses mentioned in the description? If so, what are they? Write a grammatically correct paragraph.