Earthquake Engineering DQ 4-6 Quiz

True or false: Some earthquakes are caused by what humans do.

• True
• False

True or false: In an earthquake, it is usually safer to be in a town rather than the countryside.

• True
• False

You live in a suburb of San Francisco with your family. One night, you are suddenly woken by voices shouting and a deep rumbling sound. You get out of bed wondering if you have had a bad dream. It is pitch black outside, and there are no street lights on. The rumbling is getting louder and the floor begins to move under your feet. You realize that an earthquake is happening. What should you do?

• Take shelter under the kitchen/dining table.
• Run downstairs and outside.
• Climb up onto the roof.
• Call the police.

You will use this information to answer the next 2 questions:

Shoichi Sakamoto is a Japanese inventor who designed a very different house capable of withstanding damage due to an earthquake. His idea was to lift the house off its foundations the moment an earthquake struck so that it floated on a cushion of air 3 cm thick. He demonstrated this using a model. The diagram below shows how the house would be levitated.

Experts in safety of buildings during earthquakes considered the idea but found some problems and several reasons why levitating a house during an earthquake would not work. 

Write 3 things you notice about the model.

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Which of the following could be a problem with Shoichi Sakamoto's model?

• Lifting a house 3 cm above the foundations would only protect a house if the seismic waves were less than 3 cm in amplitude.

• The house might be empty so no one could push the button to make the compressor work.

• The bag might overinflate and the house would levitate too much.

• If it was very windy, the house might slide off the foundations completely.

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Which of the following could be a problem with Shoichi Sakamoto's model?

• The house might be empty so no one could push the button to make the compressor work.

• The first earthquake tremors might be the strongest and most destructive.

• The bag might overinflate and the house would levitate too much.

• If it was very windy, the house might slide off the foundations completely.

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