Daily Curiosities: The Richter Scale is Out of Date…Sort of
POSTED by: on 09/28/2009
Here in Southern California, earthquakes are a continual and major threat, you never know when or where they will strike, and the larger ones can cause immeasurable damage to life and property. So, naturally, most people in the area are well acquainted with the standard method of measuring them: the Richter Scale.
The Richter Scale was developed in 1935 by Charles Richter as a way to measure the strength of earthquakes. The Richter scale originally started at zero and each whole number step represented a release of about 31 times more energy than the previous number. While in theory, the Richter scale has no upper or lower limit, it tends to become “saturated” around a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, and thus can be innaccurate for larger quakes.
In response to the problems with the Richter scale, a new more modern scale was developed in the 1970’s. It is known as the Moment Magnitude Scale. The main difference between the two is that the Richter scale is designed to measure intensity, while the Moment Magnitude scale measures the total energy released. In most cases the magnitudes correspond to the same number on the other scale, but in the case of larger earthquakes, the readings may be different.
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