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Contents of 11.8 How are earthquakes measured?

11.8 How are earthquakes measured?

• Magnitude - a measure of earthquake size based on the energy released during the earthquake.
• Note, this is not a direct measure like temperature, but is in fact calculated from measurements made after the event.
• Richter scale - the first magnitude scale (c. 1935) developed by Charles Richter.
• Measured by the wave amplitude on a certain type of seismometer and the time interval between P-S waves (Section 8.2).
• Scale is logarithmic, each numeric value is 10x the amplitude of the one before.