Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Mind Boggling!

The Richter Scale.  By now I think we all understand that a 4.something isn't so terible, but when you start getting into the 6.something territory things get dicey.

But to begin to get your head around it all, watch this video.  Keep an eye on the 5.8 used to begin the video...and see how it compares.  Oh...and for those who remember the 1989 World Series earthquake - that is shown here as the Loma Prieta quake, a 6.9.

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

Fascinating. It makes me wonder why we don't have a more linear way of describing the strength of earthquakes that would be inform us about relative strengths.

Tim said...

Jonathan - your question is elaborated on here...good read.

http://www.graphpaper.com/2010/01-13_drop-the-richter-scale

Jonathan said...

I like it. And "megaton" is a lot more fun to say that "Richter" anyway.