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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]
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 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.
In 1902, Italian seismologist Giuseppe Mercalli, created the Mercalli Scale, a new 12-grade scale. Significant improvements were achieved, mainly by Charles Francis Richter during the 1950s, when (1) a correlation was found between seismic intensity and the Peak ground acceleration (PGA; see the equation that Richter found for California).
This means that for a given frequency of magnitude 4.0 or larger events there will be 10 times as many magnitude 3.0 or larger quakes and 100 times as many magnitude 2.0 or larger quakes. There is some variation of b-values in the approximate range of 0.5 to 2 depending on the source environment of the region. [ 5 ]
In two most recent investigations using statistically stable samples for Italian earthquakes (approximately 100,000 events over the period 1981–2002 in the Richter local [M L ] magnitude range of 3.5–5.8) [5] and for Indian earthquakes exemplified by an aftershock sequence of 121 events with M s (surface wave magnitude) > 4.0 in 2001 in the Bhuj area of northwestern India, [4] the latest ...
This scale is also known as the Richter scale, but news media sometimes use that term indiscriminately to refer to other similar scales.) The local magnitude scale was developed on the basis of shallow (~15 km (9 mi) deep), moderate-sized earthquakes at a distance of approximately 100 to 600 km (62 to 373 mi), conditions where the surface waves ...
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