Volcanoes and Earthquakes are two of the most destructive natural disaters. They are the cause of a lot of deaths. They have many interesting facts. Scientests discover the life of these horrible yet, interesting disasters.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes are one of the most powerful disasters on Earth. An earthquake is the shaking of the ground, caused by the shaking of the plates. An earthquake depends on how far the plates move. Millions pf earthquakes happen every year, but only ten can be felt.In Chile on the richter scale it was 9.5 and five thousand people died. The richter scale is named after Charles Richter. Earthquakes happen all the time even if we can't feel them. California is the state that has the most earthquakes happen there in the U.S.A. Some earthquakes happen on land, but most happen on water.

The largest earthquake ever recorded had the magnitude of 9.5 in 1960. No one knows when earthquakes started happening.An earthquake shakes because of valcano action. "Earthquakes are an awesome thing, one we can't control. They're exciting and scary. Even if we could prodect them we couldn't stop them." Earthquakes happen when plates move. The size of the earthquake depends on how much pressure is built up. The Righter scale weighs from 1-10. An 8.5 can change the couse of a river. Rats are sometimes used to find survivers of earthquakes.

Seismic waves create earthquakes. Nobody can really tell when an earthquake is going to happen. After some earthquakes, some resources are hard to find. Earthquakes can create mudslides and tsunamis. Along borders of places eathquakes are often. The border of North America has very large earthquakes especially along the coast of Alaska. Earthquakes can be very noticible or barely felt.

A volcano is a mountain or hill made of lava, which comes from deep beneath the Earth's surface. When a volcano erupts, lava and ash build up to make a cone. Some volcanoes give off clouds of ash and gas when they erupt. Others have streams of red-hot lava pouring down their sides. Volcanoes can form on land or on the ocean floor. Some undersea volcanoes grow high enough to reach above sea level and become islands.

Strato volcanoes are tall and are built up by layers of ash and lava from previous eruptions. Because it is lighter than solid rock, magma has been rising to form a huge pool called magma chamber, beneath the volcano. The volcao will erupt when gas is held within the magma bursts out explosively, now that they are under less pressure than when the magma deeper within the Earth.

The explosive escape of the gases from the magma causes a terrible eruption which literally "blows the top" off of the volcano. Gas, blobs of magma, (now called lava), chunks of rock, and fine debris called volcanic ash are blasted upwards. (The ash, because it is very light, may reach heights of sufficient levels to endanger jet airplanes.)

Ash, lava, and rock is ejected out of the volcano. That's why it is called "ejecta". Magma (also called lava) can build up or stretch across land to make a bigger volcano. Mauna Loa in Hawaii is the biggest volcano in North America because it stretches across land, not because it is tall.