Question: what got you intrested in the energy of earthquakes and volcanoes?

Hannah Bentham answered on 24 Jun 2013:

I became interested in earthquakes generally when I was doing my geography GCSE/A level, as we studied a lot about earthquakes. Where they occur and why they effect communities differently.

But I got interested in USING earthquakes during my degree. In particular it was when I did my year abroad in Canada and I studied how we can look at earthquake energy in different ways to tells us different properties about the rocks.

An example, for S waves (secondary waves) the motion of the seismic wave is perpendicular (90 degrees) to the travelling path of the wave. S waves can split into two waves, a fast and a slow wave, if it travels through rocks that have cracks or thin layers or have crystals that are aligned. We measure the time difference between the slow and fast wave, and we can say what kind of rock would cause that time difference.

Volcanoes produce smaller earthquakes during different stages of the eruption process. These all have different signatures (e.g. different frequencies) so we can have an idea if the volcano is ready to blow!