Finding the Epicenter

Finding the Epicenter

City	Difference in P and S Waves Arrival Times	Distance to Epicenter
Denver, Colorado	2 min 40 s	1600 Km
Huston, Texas	1 min 50 s	1000 Km
Chicago, Illinois	1 min 10 s	600 Km

Results:

 The Epicenter was in Tennessee. The Denver seismograph felt the earthquake about 1170 miles away from the focus and the epicenter. The city on the map which the epicenter is closest is about 100 kilometers. The first city that felt the quake was Chicago, and the last city that felt the quake was Denver. When looking at the map I can see that the Chicago is a lot closer to the epicenter than any other city listed that felt the earthquake. San Francisco is about 2,800 kilometers away from the epicenter. From the data it shows that the farther away from the epicenter the longer it takes the P and S waves to arrive. When the distance increases from the epicenter the longer the difference P and S waves arrive. It is necessary to know the distance between the three recording centers so that you can figure out the distance between the P and S waves. This is the way where you can find the distance to the Epicenter. The epicenter in this lab is a few miles away from Nashville, Tennessee looking at the map it shows that this area is on the lower risk side of the earthquake risk in the United States, yet there still can be earthquakes.

 

I am from  

 

My families cabin is located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the south-central section of Colorado, in this mountain range there has been no recorded seismic activity in the area. However, in Eastern Colorado there is a few epicenters- in the Platte and the Arkansas River Valleys. The most quakes in the history of Colorado have been in the area of the Rocky Mountain Front Range.

This is a Rocky Mountain Front Range

The worst earthquake that ever caused damage to my precious Denver happened in 1882, November 7^th.  On the Richter scale the magnitude produced was estimated to be about six point six. This caused damage in many historical buildings in Colorado. This earthquake was felt in Utah, Kansas, it was a very big earthquake for Colorado.

 Since 1882 there have been about 500 earthquakes in Colorado, this is small compared to California because it has about 50,000 earthquakes a year. This means that Colorado is on the lighter end to when earthquakes occur, this is a very good advantage to living in Colorado.

The Sangre de Cristo Mountain range in Colorado.