Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1119/5.0165482

Publication Title

The Physics Teacher

Volume

62

Issue

3

Pages

A238

Abstract

Solution to Question 1: To estimate h, we take the geometric mean of 1 km and 70 km, or ~8 km, and take ρ ≈ 2500 kg/m³.

Hence, δl ≈ 4 × 0.05 × (2.5 × 10³ kg/m³) × (10 m/s²) × (8 × 10³ m) × (2 × 10⁴ m) × 0.1 ÷ (3 × 1010 kg · m−¹ · s−²) ≈ 1.3 m. (Note that this is not meant to be an estimate of the width of the Icelandic rock fracture in the photograph, though it appears to be of the right order of magnitude.)

Rights

This content may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the publisher. This material originally appeared in

Adam, J. (2024). Earthquakes and seismic waves: Solutions for Fermi questions, March 2024. The Physics Teacher, 62(3), A238.

and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0165482.

Original Publication Citation

Adam, J. (2024). Earthquakes and seismic waves: Solutions for Fermi questions, March 2024. The Physics Teacher, 62(3), A238. https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0165482 

ORCID

0000-0001-5537-2889 (Adam)

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