Earthquake?

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Final exam started already. This just passed Tuesday, I took my Control Systems exam. And it was not that horrifying. Well, a bit la. But not to the point that I would say "Ooohhh... abis la aku sem ni......." But having said that, I don't think I would get an A- for it. Thus, that ends my quest of graduating with a CGPA of at least 3.50 then. NOW, all the B-'s and B's that I got all along my studies begin to haunt me. Well, what's past is past. Can't be undone. But still, it's a bit rugi la.

My next exam is Power Generation, which will be on this coming Monday. I'm confident with my Power Generation exam. And I hope its result is as good as my confidence on it. :)

Speaking of my Controls exam, the night before, when I was studying for it, I got disrupted. A bit. By the tremors that shook a lot of Malaysia. A side effect from the earthquake that occurred near Sumatra. Surprisingly, I didn't feel a thing. Whereas everyone else felt it. Especially those that are living in the higher floors of this Uniten hostel of mine.

Everyone who felt it went out in droves to the parking lot sitting directly next to our apartment buildings. Which, to me, is not a good decision at all. If these buildings, which are 10-storeys high, were to topple in the direction of these parking lots, what can they do? Run? No time man... For sure they'll be squashed flat. The best place to assemble should've been at the parking lots near our multi-purpose hall (MPH). However, even though our Resident Counselors were here accompanying the students who are assembled down there, I'm quite surprised they didn't direct students to the MPH. After all, we practice our fire-drills there. Takkan la they're thinking that fire drills are for fires alone and not other types of disasters. Short-sightednye. I guess we were all in shock and couldn't think correctly.

The same goes for me. What am I thinking??? Staying in my apartment room, even when an earthquake is happening???

In my defence, at least I was thinking that, since my 1st-floor room didn't feel the shaking at all, I guess it would be safe to say that the building, in the worst-case scenario, would topple instead of collapsing. My friends on the upper floors said that their rooms were swaying. And if those swayings intensified, I think the building will have more tendency to topple rather than collapse. Heh.

Actually I'm just guessing here. It all depends on the design of the building. Which I guess they haven't cared to take into account the possibility of withstanding earthquake-induced forces. If I'm not mistaken, buildings that are built to withstand earthquakes (such as ones in Japan) will try to withstand them, and after a certain limit, either collapse or topple (to civil engineers: which one? Topple or collapse?). I think it should be collapse, so that damage can be minimised to the buildings sitting close to the collapsing building.

So, if that is true, then I was gambling with my life la that day? Huhuhu... beraninye...

In any case, I just wonder: the 2 times that earthquakes occurred off the coast of Sumatra (one in December and the other one this past Monday night), we felt tremors and shakings here in Malaysia. What if the next time, the earthquake were to occur on the island of Sumatra itself? Or maybe, occurring somewhere near the same place as these 2 previous quakes, but registering a seriously more powerful shock (higher than 9.0 on the Richter scale, for instance). An 8.2 magnitude earthquake only sent tremors in our country, but 9.0 and above? I shudder to think what would happen then... Nauzubillah...

We have always thought that we are safe from these earthquake-related types of natural disasters since our country Malaysia is not situated near the tectonic plate borders. But still, this is proof enough that if Allah wills something to happen, it will happen no matter what.

Here's an excerpt from Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, explaining a bit of how powerful earthquakes are:


The amount of energy released by an earthquake is related to how much the earth moves. The energy released by an earthquake increases 32 fold for each increase of 1 on the Richter scale. Thus, an earthquake registering 7 on the Richter scale releases 32 times as much energy as an earthquake registering 6, even while the earth moves only 10 times as far. The amount of energy released by a magnitude 4.3 earthquake is equivalent to the energy released by the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, which is equivalent to about 20 kilotons of TNT. The largest earthquakes recorded to date measured about 9.5 and released as much energy as 66,000,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. It is estimated that a magnitude 12 earthquake would release enough energy to split the earth in half.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2005. © 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Posted by Nikman Shah at 1:48 am
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