Whole lotta shakin goin on
John Bristed
High on the list of the chattering crowd is the subject of earthquakes. Well it might be. We’ve all been discussing the phenomenon.
• In Willis Street, Unity Books have sold huge numbers of Quaky Cat, a children’s book by Diane Noonan, and sold out of Quake, the big Canterbury shake of 2010 a pictorial record of the first quake by Ian Stuart and Dave Wethey. Profits from both books go towards supporting victims.
And over at the Wellington central library they’ve been fielding numerous inquiries about earthquakes and tsunami, particularly since the second earthquake in Christchurch and the devastation in Japan.
The library’s website tells us that Wellington sits on top of a point where two of the world’s tectonic plates meet. Way beneath the city the Australian plate is riding over the Pacific plate, and since the Australian is light but thick, and Pacific heavy but thin, the plates bend, buckle, or slide where they meet, irregularly causing earthquakes.
Lots has been written about earthquakes in New Zealand, and fairly obviously all the publications include Wellington as a major part of the discussion, because three major fault lines run through or very close to our city.
The library has all kinds of resources to better understand the effect on our region of earthquakes now, and in the past.
• Magnitude Eight Plus is Rodney Grapes’ very readable book about New Zealand’s biggest earthquake in 1855. Published eleven years ago, it gives personal accounts as told by people who were there, of the results of the happenings 25km below Cook Strait, plus reports then about the event from newspapers and investigations into the damage. Gapes has a second book due out at the end of 2011, his publishers say.
• ‘One of the best introductions to earthquakes in New Zealand ever written’ is simply named Earthquakes. G.A.Eiby’s 1957 book explains what causes them, why and where they happen in NZ, and what the effects are.
• A night of terror: Wairarapa’s 1942 earthquake , by Jan McLaren details what was one of the largest earthquakes to affect the region in living memory.
• If you have wondered how the Miramar Peninsula, once an island, became connected to the city, an unpublished research report for the NZ Earthquake Commission Earthquakes and the uplift history of the Miramar Peninsula, Wellington explains how the land bridge rose from under the sea.
Newspaper clippings in the library, date back to 1865.
Other useful websites include those of The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science, and GeoNet which in real time monitor latest earthquake, volcano, landslide and tsunami hazards.
It’s not immediately clear from those Richter scale numbers as to how it works. Remember that the strength of an earthquake is calculated in logarithms. Think of an earthquake of size 5 on the Richter scale. A scale 6 earthquake, releases ten times as much energy, and a scale 7 earthquake ten times as much energy as a scale 6. Each time the Richter scale goes up a whole number the earthquake is ten times as ‘big’, and that scale 7 earthquake was a hundred times ‘bigger’ than the scale 5.
John Bristed
• In Willis Street, Unity Books have sold huge numbers of Quaky Cat, a children’s book by Diane Noonan, and sold out of Quake, the big Canterbury shake of 2010 a pictorial record of the first quake by Ian Stuart and Dave Wethey. Profits from both books go towards supporting victims.
And over at the Wellington central library they’ve been fielding numerous inquiries about earthquakes and tsunami, particularly since the second earthquake in Christchurch and the devastation in Japan.
The library’s website tells us that Wellington sits on top of a point where two of the world’s tectonic plates meet. Way beneath the city the Australian plate is riding over the Pacific plate, and since the Australian is light but thick, and Pacific heavy but thin, the plates bend, buckle, or slide where they meet, irregularly causing earthquakes.
Lots has been written about earthquakes in New Zealand, and fairly obviously all the publications include Wellington as a major part of the discussion, because three major fault lines run through or very close to our city.
The library has all kinds of resources to better understand the effect on our region of earthquakes now, and in the past.
• Magnitude Eight Plus is Rodney Grapes’ very readable book about New Zealand’s biggest earthquake in 1855. Published eleven years ago, it gives personal accounts as told by people who were there, of the results of the happenings 25km below Cook Strait, plus reports then about the event from newspapers and investigations into the damage. Gapes has a second book due out at the end of 2011, his publishers say.
• ‘One of the best introductions to earthquakes in New Zealand ever written’ is simply named Earthquakes. G.A.Eiby’s 1957 book explains what causes them, why and where they happen in NZ, and what the effects are.
• A night of terror: Wairarapa’s 1942 earthquake , by Jan McLaren details what was one of the largest earthquakes to affect the region in living memory.
• If you have wondered how the Miramar Peninsula, once an island, became connected to the city, an unpublished research report for the NZ Earthquake Commission Earthquakes and the uplift history of the Miramar Peninsula, Wellington explains how the land bridge rose from under the sea.
Newspaper clippings in the library, date back to 1865.
Other useful websites include those of The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science, and GeoNet which in real time monitor latest earthquake, volcano, landslide and tsunami hazards.
It’s not immediately clear from those Richter scale numbers as to how it works. Remember that the strength of an earthquake is calculated in logarithms. Think of an earthquake of size 5 on the Richter scale. A scale 6 earthquake, releases ten times as much energy, and a scale 7 earthquake ten times as much energy as a scale 6. Each time the Richter scale goes up a whole number the earthquake is ten times as ‘big’, and that scale 7 earthquake was a hundred times ‘bigger’ than the scale 5.
John Bristed
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