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An earthquake is the shaking of the surface of Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes may also be referred to as quakes, tremors, or temblors. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling . In its most general sense, an earthquake is any seismic event ...
The Richter scale [1] (/ ˈ r ɪ k t ər /), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, [2] is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and presented in Richter's landmark 1935 paper, where he called it the "magnitude scale". [3]
A particular problem was that the M s scale (which in the 1970s was the preferred magnitude scale) saturates around M s 8.0 and therefore underestimates the energy release of "great" earthquakes [13] such as the 1960 Chilean and 1964 Alaskan earthquakes.
Even for distant earthquakes, measuring the duration of the shaking (as well as the amplitude) provides a better measure of the earthquake's total energy. Measurement of duration is incorporated in some modern scales, such as M wpd and mB c . [66] M c scales usually measure the duration or amplitude of a part of the seismic wave, the coda. [67]
Seismic moment is a quantity used by seismologists to measure the size of an earthquake. The scalar seismic moment is defined by the equation , where. μ {\displaystyle \mu } is the shear modulus of the rocks involved in the earthquake (in pascals (Pa), i.e. newtons per square meter) A {\displaystyle A} is the area of the rupture along the ...
A seismic wave is a mechanical wave of acoustic energy that travels through the Earth or another planetary body. It can result from an earthquake (or generally, a quake ), volcanic eruption, magma movement, a large landslide and a large man-made explosion that produces low-frequency acoustic energy.
The MM scale measures intensity of shaking, at any particular location, on the surface. It was developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902. While shaking experienced at the surface is caused by the seismic energy released by an earthquake, earthquakes differ in how much of their energy is radiated as seismic waves. They ...
v. t. e. Seismic intensity scalescategorize the intensity or severity of ground shaking (quaking) at a given location, such as resulting from an earthquake. They are distinguished from seismic magnitude scales, which measure the magnitude or overall strength of an earthquake, which may, or perhaps may not, cause perceptible shaking.