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Officially it's called the moment magnitude scale. It's a logarithmic scale , meaning each number is 10 times as strong as the one before it. So a 5.0 earthquake is ten times stronger than a 4.0.
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]
The original "body-wave magnitude" – mB or m B (uppercase "B") – was developed by Gutenberg 1945c and Gutenberg & Richter 1956 [25] to overcome the distance and magnitude limitations of the M L scale inherent in the use of surface waves. mB is based on the P and S waves, measured over a longer period, and does not saturate until around M 8.
The 1906 earthquake preceded the development of the Richter scale by three decades. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the quake on the modern moment magnitude scale is 7.9; [1] values from 7.7 to as high as 8.3 have been proposed. [8]
The earthquake, measuring 2.1ML on the Richter scale, hit Morvern in the Highlands just before 3.30pm. It was felt by islanders on Lismore, Inner Hebrides, and by villagers in Mallaig and Morar ...
The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes was developed by Charles Francis Richter in 1935. Subsequent scales (seismic magnitude scales) have retained a key feature, where each unit represents a ten-fold difference in the amplitude of the ground shaking and a 32-fold difference in energy. Subsequent scales are also adjusted to have ...
The following are examples of commonly used logarithmic scales, where a larger quantity results in a higher value: Richter magnitude scale and moment magnitude scale (MMS) for strength of earthquakes and movement in the Earth; A logarithmic scale makes it easy to compare values that cover a large range, such as in this map.
Seismic intensity scales categorize 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.