Japan Rocked By Earthquake

 Magnitude 8.9 Earthquake Strikes Japan

     Just a quick blog post for now, as most of you all know Japan has been struck by a violent earthquake with a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale. There are also tsunami warnings for much of the Hawaiian and west coast.I can't tell you anymore than what you will learn from the mass media about this specific earthquake, I'd like to inform you all of some of these terms or facts behind earthquakes to help you better understand the world around us and how powerful Mother Nature really is.

     We will start with earthquakes. The following chart is what is called "Richter Scale". The first image is more of a scientific way of reading the scale, while the other is a more understandable one for us to all apply what we have experienced too.

      

          The way the Richter scale works is it measures the strength of an earthquake. The most confusion that takes place within this scale is most assume that if you have a quake that is say a 7.0 on the Richter Scale that it is 7 times stronger than a 1.0 earthquake. This is FALSE. "Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude." To put this into terms for someone that is not a specialist in studying earthquakes this means that if you have a 7.0 earthquake, that earthquake is 10 times as powerful as a 6.0 earthquake. So take the earthquake in Japan for example, it is a 8.9 magnitude on the Richter. So if you have ever

felt an 8.0 earthquake, this quake was at least 9 times stronger than the 8.0 you have felt. Needless to say, these quakes that have such a high magnitude are extremely destructive. News reports have said that hundreds of bodies have been found and that the destruction is following this quake will be catastrophic. We must all keep the Japanese people in our prayers and thoughts as they try to recover from one of the fiercest earthquakes in the history of the world.

Jon's Random Tidbits