explain plate motion and how it affects the frequency of earthquakes in a region?
415282
The earth is split into plates. Whenever one moves, it will cause all the others to move. It eventually increases the number of earthquakes along a fault line until the plates settle down again. Eh, that's the typical fifth to tenth grade answer.
1044728
The foci of earthquakes at transform boundaries tend to be at shallow depths.\n\nSee source.
792319
An earthquake is a phenomenon that results from and is powered by the sudden release of stored energy in the crust that propagates seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes may manifest themselves by a shaking or displacement of the ground and sometimes tsunamis, which may lead to loss of life and destruction of property.\n\nEarthquakes may occur naturally or as a result of human activities. In its most generic sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether a natural phenomenon or an event caused by humans—that generates seismic waves.\n\nTypes of earthquakes Naturally occurring earthquakes Most naturally occurring earthquakes are related to the tectonic nature of the Earth. Such earthquakes are called tectonic earthquakes. The Earth's lithosphere is a patchwork of plates in slow but constant motion caused by the heat in the Earth's mantle and core. Plate boundaries grind past each other, creating frictional stress. When the frictional stress exceeds a critical value, called local strength, a sudden failure occurs. The boundary of tectonic plates along which failure occurs is called the fault plane. When the failure at the fault plane results in a violent displacement of the Earth's crust, the elastic strain energy is released and seismic waves are radiated, thus causing an earthquake. This processes of strain, stress, and failure is referred to as the Elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth and is converted into heat. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available potential energy, though these losses are negligible Earthquakes occurring at boundaries of tectonic plates are called interplate earthquakes, while the less frequent events that occur in the interior of the lithospheric plates are called intraplate earthquakes.\n\nYou could get more information from the link below...
782258
At a subduction fault, one plate is being forced under the advancing plate, so it depend which fault you're refering to. Click on the site below for much more.
270342
That depends on the plates, and it varies.  You can't really say US gets the most because Asia has had just as bad earthquakes in different regions over time.  \n\nI found a map of the unstable plates... pretty informative ... check it out:\n\nhttp://library.thinkquest.org/21988/earthquake/earthquake.htm
948942
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake#Size_and_frequency_of_occurrence for your answer.\n\nGood Luck!!!
1175122
~d1hossain is close.  What you need to check out is "tectonic" plates and tectonic mechanics/physics.   You might also want to look into seismology, volcanism, and diastrophism.  As for the relative danger zones, you might want to look into tsunamis and other seismic displacements.  "Nearness" to a fault is relative in the world of geology.  Few places on earth are not "near" a fault and safe from the effects of a cataclysmic underslide, as evidenced by the Rockies and the Himalayas.\nThat's all of your homework I'll do for you.  If it isn't homework, and you are asking out of genuine curiosity, all the more reason to do your own reasearch.  It's called learning.
234822
earthquakes ... \nseismic activity ... \n\nand these happen when PLATES move! It's not movement in the rocks that causes earthquakes.  And the dynamics of plate movement is called "plate tectonics".\n\nMoreover, plate tectonics include volcanic behaviour, continental drift, and mountains (making, destrucion, etc)\n\nBut then again, I really don't know what you're trying to ask!
1099478
Tectonic plates are moving.
695195
Convergent boundaries occur where two plates are being pushed together and collide. This is sometimes called a "destructive plate margin". One thing to keep in mind is that when subduction occurs, the denser plate (usually the older one) generally is considered to be the one that is pushed into the hot asthenosphere. Its rocks are melted and the resulting hot magma migrate upward along cracks and weakened areas in the overriding plate forming volcanoes. Of course, you always get earthquakes along with this process. The regions where the earthquakes occur are called the Wadati-Benioff zones. However, what actually happens depend on the composition of the crustal plates involved.\n\nOceanic colliding with continental crustal plates: An example of this is the subduction of the denser oceanic Nazca Plate under the South American Plate, pushing limestone strata upward to form the towering Andes and generating destructive earthquakes. Another example is the Cascadian subduction zone off the northwest coast of the U.S. you can find volcanoes along the subduction zones. Deep trenches are formed as a result of subduction.
113993
Yes. Earthquake activity in this region is due to plate tectonics. In Kashmir the two plates involved are the Eurasion and Indian tectonic plates. \n\nHere are a few good ways to demonstrate this for elementary school children:\n\n*Have them use their hands with thumbs hooked together and move push one hand forward while pulling one hand back. Force builds up, but when one of the thumbs breaks free both hands makes a big movement (earthquake).\n\n*make playdough "plates" and have slowly pushed together to see uplifting and subduction.\n\n*take model cars/trucks. Predict what would happen if they have met head-on and continue to move. Let cars represent oceanic plates (less dense) and trucks represent continental plates (more dense). This is a good visual to see uplifting (rumpled hoods when they are the same density--car/car or truck/truck) and subduction (truck runs over top of car).\n\nGreat website for kids is:\n\nhttp://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/kids.php?\n\nGreat website for kids with links to many science websites is:\n\nhttp://members.tripod.com/~ozpk/00000science1-4\n\nHope this helps!
855026
Most earthquakes happen along the edge of the oceanic and continental plates. [Oceanic plates are under water, continental plates are above.] The earth's crust (the outer layer of the planet) is made up of a bunch of pieces, called plates. The plates get moved around by the liquid layers of magma underneath the Earth's crust. The plates are always bumping into each other, and pulling away from each other or past eachother. Earthquakes usually happen when two plates are running into each other or sliding past each other. They can also happen along faults, too though.
945993
Earthquake, shaking of the Earth’s surface caused by rapid movement of the Earth’s rocky outer layer. Earthquakes occur when energy stored within the Earth, usually in the form of strain in rocks, suddenly releases. This energy is transmitted to the surface of the Earth by earthquake waves. The study of earthquakes and the waves they create is called seismology (from the Greek seismos, “to shake”). Scientists who study earthquakes are called seismologists.\n\nThe destruction an earthquake causes depends on its magnitude and duration, or the amount of shaking that occurs. A structure’s design and the materials used in its construction also affect the amount of damage the structure incurs. Earthquakes vary from small, imperceptible shaking to large shocks felt over thousands of kilometers. Earthquakes can deform the ground, make buildings and other structures collapse, and create tsunamis (large sea waves). Lives may be lost in the resulting destruction.\n\nEarthquakes, or seismic tremors, occur at a rate of several hundred per day around the world. A worldwide network of seismographs (machines that record movements of the Earth) detects about 1 million small earthquakes per year. Very large earthquakes, such as the 1964 Alaskan earthquake, which caused millions of dollars in damage, occur worldwide once every few years. Moderate earthquakes, such as the 1989 tremor in Loma Prieta, California, and the 1995 tremor in Kōbe, Japan, occur about 20 times a year. Moderate earthquakes also cause millions of dollars in damage and can harm many people.\n\nIn the last 500 years, several million people have been killed by earthquakes around the world, including over 240,000 in the 1976 T’ang-Shan, China, earthquake. Worldwide, earthquakes have also caused severe property and structural damage. Adequate precautions, such as education, emergency planning, and constructing stronger, more flexible, safely designed structures, can limit the loss of life and decrease the damage caused by earthquakes.
1150346
the weather does not have any influence on earhquakes.\nEarthquakes are generated by the movements of tectonic plates, by local faults and by volcanic activity.\nCheck these links:\nhttp://earthquake.usgs.gov/\nhttp://volcanoes.usgs.gov/\nhttp://geology.usgs.gov/
731013
Really, the answer to your question is simply: Plate Tectonics. Read below for details.\n\nEarthquakes: \nIt all comes down to stress and strain from the interaction of different plates, chiefly at the boundaries. It is not 'the plates rubbing together' as many people say; or at least that's a very simplistic view.\n\nPlate tectonics causes stress on the continents and oceans, all over the surface of the earth. In some places, the stress is very small (usually within the plates). Elsewhere, the stress is high, usually where the plates meet each other. Since each plate moves, when two come in contact, the stress each other. They can push on each other and cause compressional stress, they can pull with extensional stress, and they can slide past or shear each other with tensional stress.\n\nFaulting, causing earthquakes, comes from the fact that this stress is building up all the time, but rocks and continents are strong materials. Just like hitting a rock with a small hammer, you do put stress on it, but a small amount. It would take a sledgehammer to put enough strain (effects and accumulation of stress) to build up and cause breakage. In the earth, the area around an active fault builds up strain from the stress of plate tectonics. Most faults become locked, because of this strength, and thus can not release their strain. Away from the fault, the stress produces very small and slow movement of the rock masses as a whole. Eventually, the strain is too much and the rest of the plate has moved too far and the fault releases the strain build-up all at once in a big stress release called an earthquake. This is called the elastic rebound theory, and it explains most (but not all) movements.\n\nThis is why an earthquake's size is relative to the fault size. The bigger the fault, the bigger the strain build up, and the bigger the release in an earthquake. Subduction zones and collision zones, where large portions of plates actually can rub together as a whole, have the really big earthquakes, like the 2004 Sumatra earthquake. In other plate boundaries, the entire plate boundary does not act together, so the faults become spread out and many faults take up the strain from the tectonic stress, like with the San Andreas Fault in California (it only takes up ~3/4 of the stress between the plates).\n\nEarthquakes are really tricky things; there is still so much we need to learn. As of now, there is no way to predict them, but we can say where the danger is highest and about how long between events.\n\nVolcanoes:\nThere are several processes in Plate Tectonics that cause volcanism, but they result in two main types of volcanism.\n\nVolcanism in subduction is caused by volitals, like H2O, CO2. These are carried down by the plate, mainly in the form of weak minerals. These minerals break down with pressure and temperature into stronger minerals that don't contain water and carbon dioxide. The leftover gases and liquids travel into the mantle (the mantle wedge) and hydrate the mantle, causing melting. The melt rises and then... volcano!\n\nThe other main cause is from rising mantle material, which forms decompression melting. Basically, hot mantle is kept from melting by the pressure of the earth at depth. When this material rises, the pressure drops much faster than the temperature, and thus it partially melts. This mainly occurs at divergent boundaries and hot spots, which are areas in plate tectonics that have rising materials or spreading.\n\nMountain Belts:\n\nNon-volcanic mountain belts are caused by compressive stress in plate tectonics. This can be 1. fold and thrust belts in highly compressive subduction zones (almost always from oceanic beneath continental subduction, e.g. east Andes, Rockies) or 2. continental-continental collisions (e.g. Himalaya, Appalachian).
463260
A GPS unit can track ground swelling (especially around active volcanoes).  It relays information about the position of the ground as it changes.\n\nA reading that changes is a definite indicator of change in the ground and could indicate earthquakes or erupions.\n\nAs for plate tectonics, it relays general continental motion (albeit in inches/year)
245651
I know I am not going to win with this answer but the answer is "All of them".\n\nThe reason stems from the fact that a seismometer placed anywhere on the planet will record motions in the Earth.\n\nSomalia and Ethiopia (and even Sudan, Eritrea and Egypt) lie directly on plate boundaries so they will continuously experience quite large earthquakes.\n\nI know you were probably referring to some big specific event, registering some high value on the Richter magnitude scale, and that I would have to look up somewhere. I don't know where.