Earthquake!

On Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. there was an earthquake in Northern Virginia.  It was my first earthquake, which I am so excited about because I am obsessed with the science behind natural disasters.

I was in my classroom when it happened, and we heard a loud boom that sounded like someone dropped a dumpster on top of the roof and very brief vibrations.  The students all thought it was an earthquake, but I said, "No, we don't have earthquakes.  Go back to work."  Well, an hour later, I got an e-mail from someone in the county who sends out weather reports in the winter (his hobby) and he reported that there actually was an earthquake!  The timing of the e-mail was perfect, because we were reviewing science for the SOLs so it perfectly led into a review of earthquakes!

I learned later that we were approximately 1 mile from the epicenter.  Another interesting fact that I actually learned from one of my student's extra credit report (assigned that night) was that we are not over a fault line.  The earthquake was instead the result of a bedrock fault, 6 miles below the earth's surface. 

And that concludes the science lesson for today.