Quote:
Originally Posted by WRX06TR
Actually for every whole number increase in the Richter scale is about a 31 times as forceful as the previous whole number value.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/topics/richter.php
Aside..I am trippin! I hate the shock that earthquakes have, whereas most other natural happenings has some sort of a sign (usually) I hate the fact that we could be waiting for a 6.0 to hit and out of nowhere be shaking. Ugh, I hate that surprise they have. I almost vaulted off my couch when that last one hit... |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Wiki
The Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs (adjustments are included to compensate for the variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquake). Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released.
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It's a base 10 logarithmic scale for measuring amplitude, so a 1 point increase is equivalent to 10 times more amplitude, which requires 31.6 times the energy to create. So yeah, it's 30 some odd times more energy, but still only 10 times the shaking, which is what I thought the Richter Scale was for (measuring what the quake
feels like). Usually the
Moment Magnitude scale is used for measuring the energy of a quake.