Structural Madness

 In this blog post, I will try to explain in simplest words possible as to what happens to a building during an earthquake.  Imagine this: You are travelling in a car which I am driving. I applied a sudden brake. You will experience a serious "jerk" and most probably curse me after that. But that sudden "jerk" also called as deceleration is experienced because your body changed the velocity from 100 feet/second to dead zero in 3 seconds. That is equivalent to gravitational acceleration applied in horizontal direction. This is called inertial force. There was a change in state of motion of your body.  "A body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion unless an external force is applied to change the state of body" - Newton's first law of motion.  A force experienced by a body is equal to: Force = Mass x Acceleration When earth shakes, it gives these impulses at the base of the building. Let us look at an accelerat