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What causes earthquakes?

Today I felt my chair was shaking while I was working on a web template. I stood up and left the room and went out to see if it was really earthquake or I was being paranoid (because I was sitting in front of my PC writing codes and didn't know how much time I'd spent doing this).

I came back in room and started watching news channel. They were highlighting that jolts of earthquake with magnitude 3.4 were felt in most areas of our province.

Curiosity hit my mind and I started to find out the reasons of earthquakes. There were lots of explanations but I am writing what I understood from all those pages.

Plate tectonics can cause earthquake

Everyone knows that earth is made of four major layers which are crust, mantle, outer core and inner core. Earth's outer layer consists of pieces of tectonic plates. Tectonic plates are also called as lithospheric plates. Actually lithosphere is broken up into tectonic plates.

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These tectonic plates keep on moving and slid pass each other slowly. The surface where they slip is usually called fault. Most earthquakes occur at the boundaries of these plates because boundaries are made of many faults and are rough, so they get jammed while sliding and when they are released we feel earthquake.

Earthquakes due to volcanoes

Under volcanoes magma is stored and when this magma moves upward causing fractures in rocks, we feel earthquake.

I hope this short article explained some of many major causes of earthquakes. If you have something to add to this or if there is anything wrong, please let me know.

Earthquakes can cause pretty much weird stuff.

Disordered rail track due to earthquake.