Richter magnitude scale
Description
assigns a magnitude number to quantify the energy released by an earthquake. The Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude. This scale saturates at around M=7, because the high frequency waves recorded locally have wavelengths shorter than the rupture lengths of large earthquakes.
Related formulasVariables
ML | Richter magnitude scale (dimensionless) |
A | Amplitude maximum (dimensionless) |
A0 | Amplitude ( empirical function depended only on the epicentral distance of the station) (dimensionless) |