Taylor's+Story

= = Late one night, 12 o ‘clock am to be exact, an earthquake awakened me and my friends, Sarah, Caroline. We were watching "the haunting in Salem", the hour before we fell asleep. We were home alone, and still frightened from the movie. We went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but then we realized all of the glasses and plates were shattered on the floor! The power was out when we tried to turn the lights on! We had no clue what to do. Until we remembered we learned about earthquakes in science the other day! Right as I thought about that, the power turned on! We turned on the news and found out that the **epicenter ** (the point on the earth's surface vertically above the focus of an earthquake) was located in Billerica! That was so close to us! But we stayed calm and called my mother…she didn't pick up. We tried calling my father... he didn't pick up. We were still watching the news. Anxious, scared, and terrified. The weather man told us there would be a tsunami in reading! It will reach Westford just barely! He told us to go to the roof, but, we have not learned about tsunamis. If I heard Mr. froberg correctly while he was introducing tsunami’s and telling us what we will be learning about on Monday, he said never go to the lowest floor while a tsunami occurs because then the water will sink down and there will be no way out from your basement! Luckily he told us that or else Caroline, Sarah, and I would be dead! So we were on our ways up the stairs to the highest floor, not the roof, when someone was calling… I raced down stairs, grabbed the phone and a deep raspy voice was talking. They said everyone has been evacuated out of a place with any reach of hitting the tsunami, except for us. Then all of a sudden we heard the sound of a garbage disposal ten notches higher! It was a police man who was on eh phone! They picked us up and gave us a whole lesson on steps to do when things like this happens! He said we can’t just know “an earthquake is a vibrate in the ground”. He wanted to give us a //whole// lot more of science. He started to talk about what a **tsunami ** is, which is, a large wave produced by an earthquake on the ocean floor. He also said we live near a **rev** **erse fault **, which is a geological fault in which the upper side appears to have been pushed upward by compression. then he bored us even more by telling us there are 3 other types of faults which are **normal faults** which is, a type of fault where the **hanging wall** (the block of rock that forms the upper half of a fault) slides downward; caused by tension in the crust. A **strike-slip fault** is a type of fault in which rocks on either side move past each other sideways with little up or down motion. I was almost falling asleep by the time he started talking about **p waves which ** hit us an hour ago, and the **s waves** came 3 seconds after. P waves are a type of seismic wave that compresses and expands the ground. S waves are a type of seismic waves that moves the ground up and down or side to side he explained in is rough, rough voice. We were starting to get afraid when is repeated **aftershock 7 times** because it could come now or later, or in a few days, or a few months. We are almost asleep now. An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a larger earthquake in the same area. After that, we were all asleep having a dream of the science we all just learned.