Dennis, I think there's another consideration that leads to this. As I
understand it, geologists can now estimate the energy stored in
unreleased faults. They try to correlate those to the estimates of the
energy released when the fault slips or subducts. Since there is no
method for predicting the amount of time in which this potential energy
will be released (that I have ever heard of), power is of no use in
these studies.
When a fault releases in one zone, it usually creates a strain (delta L
over L_0) in other locations on the fault. This raises the likelihood of
seismic events in those locations.
Jim
Dennis Brownridge wrote:
....
> Why don't they use power (energy per time)? I suppose it's because they are
> interested in the total amount of work (energy) that the quake can do.
> Quakes happen very quickly, so trying to divide energy by time might lead to
> wildly different power values for the same quake. Kind of like lightning
> bolts, I suppose, where I see figures in joules but not watts.
....
--
Metric Methods(SM) "Don't be late to metricate!"
James R. Frysinger, CAMS http://www.metricmethods.com/
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