Format of exam:  21 multiple choice questions, 9 True/False questions and 3 short answer/essay questions

Things you should know:
1) You should understand what happens in an earthquake.  Be familiar with the 4 kinds of seismic waves discussed in class (their motions, velocities, etc.)
2) You should understand how stress causes rocks to break and which types of fault are associated with different kinds of stress and different plate boundaries
3) Understand how earthquakes are associated with plate boundaries
4) Properties of a wave:  wavelength, amplitude, period, frequency
5) Measuring the size of an earthquake:  Intensity scale, Richter magnitude, surface wave magnitude, p-wave magnitude, moment magnitude
6) Know what the following are: tsunami, seiche, volcanic swarm, harmonic tremors, epicenter, hypocenter, focus, Moho, Wadati-Benioff zone, Low-velocity zone
7) How to determine the Richter magnitude (and how the amplitude and energy vary with magnitude) and how to determine the epicenter of an earthquake
8) Things that have been used to predict and forecast earthquakes
9) How to interpret a focal sphere (including type of fault and strike and dip)

You should definitely look over your old exams

Questions from chapter 4 and accompanying lecture:  4 multiple choice

Know the types of strain (brittle, ductile, elastic); be able to interpret focal spheres (understand that the filled in portion is compression -- the ground is moving towards this region)

Questions from chapters 5 and 8 and accompanying lecture:  3 multiple choice, 5 matching

Understand how to locate an earthquake and how you use a travel-time curve; be familiar with the different methods for determining the size of an Earthquake (intensity vs. magnitude, surface wave magnitude, richter magnitude, moment magnitude, and p-wave magnitude)

Questions from chapter 6 and accompanying lecture:  3 multiple choice, 8 fill-in the blank, 1 true-false, and a short essay

You need to be familiar with the chemical layers of the Earth (crust, mantle, core), the mechanical layers of the Earth (lithosphere, asthenosphere, mesosphere, outer core, inner core) and how these layers are related to each other.  You should know what the following are:  low-velocity zone, transition zone, Wadati-Benioff zone, MOHO, P- and S-wave shadow zones.  You also need to understand how we know the outer core is liquid.

Questions from chapter 9 and accompanying lecture:  2 multiple choice questions

You should understand the difference between seismic swarms and harmonic tremors

Questions from chapter 10 and accompanying lecture:  3 multiple choice and 3 true-false questions

You should know what things have been proposed as precursors (such as odd animal behavior, emission of low frequency radio waves, foreshocks, etc.).  You should understand the difference between forecasting and prediction.  You should understand how a trench cut across a fault helps with forecasting (but not prediction).  You should understand what dilatancy means.
 

Study guide for first exam

Questions from week 1 lecture:  10 multiple choice, 2 true/false

Things to know:

1) The four kinds of seismic waves (P, S, Love, Rayleigh) - their motions, their restriction to motion (can they pass through solid, liquid, gas??), their relative arrival times, and whether or not they are restricted to the Earth's surface

2) focus, hypocenter, epicenter

3) plate boundaries (divergent, convergent, transform) and the features you expect to find at those plate boundaries, subduction, Wadati-Benioff zone

4) intraplate vs. interplate earthquakes

5) Pattern of location of earthquake foci

Questions from week 2 lecture:  2 true/false, 2 multiple choice, 1 short answer with diagram

Things to know:

1) KNOW YOUR FAULTS!  Normal, reverse, left-lateral strike-slip, right-lateral strike-slip, hanging wall, footwall, fault plane, strike and dip

2) Cascadia subduction zone:  Evidence for 1700 earthquake

Questions from HW1 and associated reading: 2 multiple choice, 1 short answer/essay

Things to know:

1)  Shallow-focus, intermediate-focus, deep-focus earthquakes
2) Relationship between earthquake foci and plate tectonics
3) seiche, seismic gap, causes of tsunamis

Questions from the two video tapes shown in class:  2 multiple choice, 1 true/false

Things to know:

1) main points covered in tapes regarding destruction of San Francisco and Anchorage/Alaska
2) features of tsunamis (appearance, multiple waves, etc.)