Earthquake waves, more commonly known as seismic waves, are vibrations generated by an earthquake and propagated within Earth or along its surface. There are four principal types of elastic waves: two, primary and secondary waves, travel within Earth, whereas the other two, Rayleigh and Love waves, called surface waves, travel along its surface.
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. He had written papers in 1983 and again in 1988 saying that the region with "the highest likelihood" of a large earthquake was what he called the Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault. An earthquake is the sudden movement of Earth’s crust at a fault line. When the stresses get too large, it leads to cracks called faults.
Seismographs are instruments that record the vibrations of the Earth’s surface caused by seismic waves. The study of earthquakes is called seismology so an earthquake expert should be called a seismologist. Seismologists study earthquakes by using seismographs and by venturing into the field to view the damage caused by an earthquake. Chang Heng invented the first seismograph in A.D. 132 and called the instrument an earthquake … The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the earth is called the epicenter. Earthquakes can range in size from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, and wreak destruction across entire cities.
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When tectonic plates move, it also causes movements at the faults. A person who studies earthquakes is called a seismologist. The surface where they slip is called the fault or fault plane. This non-stop movement causes stress on Earth’s crust. An earthquake is what happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another.