Measuring strength and location of Earthquakes

Question 1

What is the difference between a seismometer and a seismograph?

Answer 1

Seismometers are instruments that respond to ground motion . While seismographs use seismometers, timers and recorders to record this phenomenon.

Question 2

What is the Richter scale?

Answer 2

The Richter scale measures the intensity of a quake. The higher the Richter scale the more impact. he Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale, meaning that each order of magnitude is 10 times more intensive than the last one.

Question 3

How much greater is a magnitude of 3 to a magnitude of 1?

Answer 3

100 times more.

Question 4

What is the Mercalli scale?

Answer 4

The Mercalli scale is a scale the measures the intensity of an earthquake. It measures from I - Instrumental to XII - Catastrophic. It doesn’t have a mathematical basis instead it is an arbitrary ranking based on observed affects. The lower numbers of the scale is based on the impact felt by people while the higher numbers are the based on structural damage observations.