云南德宏州芒市第一中学高中英语 earthquake 素材 新人教版必修 1What is an "earthquake"? An earthquake is any shaking of the ground - usually intense shaking of the ground - caused by either natural sources or by humans. The most common types of earthquakes are those caused by ruptures of geologic faults or earthquakes associated with volcani c activity.1.什么是地震？ 任何地动-通常是强烈的地动，无论是 由自然力引起还是由人为引起，都叫地震 。最常见的地震是那些由断层或者是火山活动引起的。Can earthquakes be predicted?Whether earthquakes can be predicted is a very difficult question for we seismologists to an swer. Certainly, there are things that we can predict about ea rthquakes. For ex ample, we know where earthquakes are going to occur: primarily on large geologic faults. We know how big t hose earthquakes might be. For example, on the San Andreas Fault here in California, we know earthquakes can be as large as magnitude 8. The difficulty is that we cannot predict when large earthquakes will occur with any kind of reliability or precision needed to warn communities of impending disasters.地震能否被预测？ 这个问题我们地震学家 很难给出回答。当然，有些与地震有关的事宜是可以预知的。例如，我们知道地震将发生在哪里：主要发生在大的地质断层上。我们知道那些地震有多强烈。比如，在加利福尼亚的圣安地列斯断层，我们知道地震最高可达 8 级。难点在于，我们不能作出可靠、准确的预测，判断地震何时会发生，以便警示人们灾难的降临。
