Scientific Article Critical Review

Words: 677
Pages: 3

Writing Assignment #3: Scientific Article Critical Review “A lack of rumbling does not necessarily make an earthquake harmless. Some of the quiet types could presage devastating tsunamis or larger, ground-shaking shocks” (Cervelli 90). The article I chose was The Threat of Silent Earthquakes, by Peter Cervelli. As mentioned in the quote at the beginning of the article, silent earthquakes can quite possibly be responsible of forewarning us of a larger earthquake. What are silent earthquakes? Silent earthquakes are shifts in Earth’s tectonic plates that can last several days or weeks. The silent earthquakes occur so far underground that they may not even cause damage to the surface of the Earth (Handwerk). These quakes are cannot be felt …show more content…
He begins by providing a background of the story to the reader. Then, he mentions how silent earthquakes were discovered and how they forewarn us of future earthquakes. I believe the author organized this piece logically. He broke down the reading into different sections so that one section lead to another. However, the main points of his article can be presented better. Cervelli did provide main topics by listing them as his main headings of each new section. This made the overall reading for this article a little easier to read but I still had to depict the main points he was trying to make. His article is not repetitive; he gradually eases into the next topic he aimed to cover and provided thorough thoughts, explanations, and key …show more content…
This showed the heavily impacted areas as a result of the landslide and showed the approximate heights of the waves around the islands in meters. Another graphic the author used to help convey his article was showing how silent earthquakes work; it shows everything that is involved in the process before a silent earthquake takes place. The figure the author used of the Hawaii I did not find to be very effective, but the figure he used to help visualize how silent earthquakes begin was effective. This image allows the reader of his article to visually understand the process that takes place to spark these silent earthquakes. The article concludes with restating that silent earthquakes can be predetermining factors of silent earthquakes. Although, Cervelli does state that this thinking is very new and still needs to be researched. Since there is no definite answer at the moment, we need to continue to observe the factors that are involved. We are only in the beginning stages of studying these types of earthquakes and there is more yet to be discovered. One day we may eventually reach a final, definite answer as to how the silent earthquakes relate to potential future