SSC Stenographer 17th Nov 2022 Shift 2

Read the following passage and answer the question.

The narrator of this story is a 12-year-old girl who has gone to London with her mother to visit the dentist. The girl has a tooth filled, and then she and her mother go to a café afterwards. When it’s time to go home, they discover that it’s pouring rain and they have no umbrella. They decide to get a taxi. While they’re watching for a cab, an old gentleman sheltering under an umbrella approaches them. He asks for a favor. The girl’s mother is very distrustful of strange men. The old man explains that he has forgotten his wallet and would like to sell them his umbrella in return for taxi fare back to his home. He explains that it’s a very nice silk umbrella worth twenty pounds, but his legs are weak and he simply must take a taxi home. The mother likes the sound of the deal, but the little girl worries that they’re taking advantage of the old man. The mother offers to simply give him the cab fare, but he insists that they take the umbrella. The transaction is made and everyone is happy. As the mother is proudly explaining the importance of correctly judging people, the daughter notices that the old man has quickly crossed the street and is hurrying away. “He doesn’t look very tired to me,” she said. The mother is displeased. “He’s up to something.” They decide to follow him and find out. They quickly follow him as he rushes through the rainy streets. Eventually they find themselves at a pub called “The Red Lion” and watch through the window as the old man enters and uses the pound note to pay for a triple whiskey.

An earthquake is what happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. The surface where they slip is called the fault or fault plane. The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the earth is called the epicenter.

Sometimes an earthquake has foreshocks. These are smaller earthquakes that happen in the same place as the larger earthquake that follows. Scientists can’t tell that an earthquake is a foreshock until the larger earthquake happens. The largest, main earthquake is called the mainshock. Mainshocks always have aftershocks that follow. These are smaller earthquakes that occur afterwards in the same place as the mainshock. Depending on the size of the mainshock, aftershocks can continue for weeks, months, and even years after the mainshock! The earth has four major layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust. The crust and the top of the mantle make up a thin skin on the surface of our planet.

But this skin is not all in one piece - it is made up of many pieces like a puzzle covering the surface of the earth. Not only that, but these puzzle pieces keep slowly moving around, sliding past one another and bumping into each other. We call these puzzle pieces tectonic plates, and the edges of the plates are called the plate boundaries. The plate boundaries are made up of many faults, and most of the earthquakes around the world occur on these faults. Since the edges of the plates are rough, they get stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving. Finally, when the plate has moved far enough, the edges unstick on one of the faults and there is an earthquake.