You will research major earthquakes and pick one to answer the following questions:
1. what is the location of your earthquake?
2. what was the richter scale reading?
3. how many lives were lost?
4. when did the earthquake occur?
5. in your opinion, should people build and live near major fault lines?
discussion directions:
put your cursor in the reply box below to start a reply to the topic.
enter your text.
when complete, click post reply.
reply to at least two of your classmates
all posts and replies should be proofread for spelling and grammar and in complete sentences.

1. A Mix of Science and Astrology

Predicting the future does not sit well with most earthquake scientists, including Charles Richter, quoted above. Yet if earthquake research is to truly benefit society, it must lead ultimately to prediction, no matter how elusive that goal may be.

Society asks specialists to predict many things, not just earthquakes. How will the stock market perform? Will next year be a good crop year? Will peace be achieved in the Middle East? The answers to any of these important questions, including the chance of a damaging earthquake near you in the near future, depend on complex bits of information. For each question, experts are asked to predict outcomes, and their opinions often are in conflict. Mathematicians tell me that predicting earthquakes and predicting the behavior of the stock market have a lot in common, even though one is based on physical processes in the Earth and the other is not.