CN's+Earthquake+off+the+Coast+of+Panama

Earthquake off the Coast of Panama (South America)




This earthquake, that starts a little after 19:15, is an earthquake off the coast of Panama (South America). The earthquake shows signs of both p-waves and s-waves.

Here is the location of the earthquake: media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&geocode=&hl=en&jsv=107&q=5.7100++-82.8450&safe=active&ie=UTF8&s=AARTsJp0_6lORTyrWy1MNfntFRRY0FmA9Q&ll=30.751278,-74.882812&spn=96.001972,149.414063&z=2&iwloc=addr&output=embed" width="425" height="350"

This earthquake was able to travel through both land and water allowing for the s-wave to occur. A p-wave takes about 5-8km/sec and an s-wave takes about 3-5km/sec. The distance between the earthquake and Hanford, Washington, is roughly about 5716.54 km. (Hanford, Washington being at the coordinates 46º27"8.82 N and 119º24"29.52 W and the earthquake at the latitude and longitude below. I found the distance using Google Earth and the ruler in Google Earth.)

Here is the details of the earthquake taken from the [|Earthquake Catalog Search and Map].


 * Date || Time || Lat || Lon || Depth || Mag || Magt || Nst || Gap || Clo || RMS || SRC || Event ID ||
 * 2005/05/05 || 19:12:21.41 || 5.7100 || -82.8450 || 18.00 || 6.50 || MW || 190 ||  ||   || 1.26 || NEI || 200505054069 ||

Here is the math I did to calculate the time the earthquake took to reach LIGO from Panama.

If you look at the details, the earthquake took place at 19:12:21.41. From the calculations of the p-wave and s-wave, the p-wave would arrive at LIGO at about 19:28 and the s-wave would arrive at LIGO at about 19:44. Looking at the LIGO graphs, especially the one where the time is more spread out and easier to see, you can see the arrival of both of the waves at approximately both of these times.

Procedure to finding the actual speed of the wave!

 * Date || Time || Lat || Lon || Depth || Mag || Magt || Nst || Gap || Clo || RMS || SRC || Event ID ||
 * 2005/05/05 || 19:12:21.41 || 5.7100 || -82.8450 || 18.00 || 6.50 || MW || 190 ||  ||   || 1.26 || NEI || 200505054069 ||

After finding roughly whether the earthquake fits the data you can get a precise speed of the earthquake. First, you need to determine the distance of the earthquake to the LIGO station. Using the latitude and longitude of the earthquake at 5.7100 -82.8450. Plug these into Google Earth and find the kilometer distance of the earthquake to LIGO using the coordinates of LIGO at 46°27'18.76"N, 119°24'27.51"W. The distance between this earthquake and LIGO is 5,716.56 kilometers.

Now, find the time of the actual earthquake using the USGS website. For this earthquake it took place at 19:12:21.41. Next, look at the graph zoomed in to an hour (note: there's a limit on how far you can zoom in, try and get as close as possible). After you zoomed in try and find approximately the exact time the earthquake hit at the LIGO site. On the LIGO site, it shows that the earthquake arrived at 19:26. Now, determine the the difference between the two times. The difference between these two times would be approximately 14 minutes, which would equal a total of 840 seconds. This would be the p-wave time of the earthquake.

Now, for the s-wave, it started at 19:45. The difference between 19:12:21.41 and 19:45 is 32 minutes and 20 seconds, which equals a total of 1,940 seconds.

Now that you have determined the distance and time of the earthquake with both the s-wave and p-wave you can find the speed of the earthquake using the common equation of distance/time=speed.

This equation determines the p-wave speed of the earthquake:

This equation determines the s-wave speed of the earthquake: