StephenSails
Active member
Just heard about the dreadful news of another earthquake in the region, I hope that they make it through tonight with out another dreadful Tsunami.
Fingers crossed for SE Aisa
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snowleopard
Active member
fortunately it's not just any old earthquake that triggers a tsunami- there needs to me a major displacement of water.
that said, with an intensity over 8 is a major quake and there are bound to have been a lot of casualties from collapsing buildings.
i'm sure we can expect to see more quakes in that area after such a large re-alignment of the fault line.
incicentally, can anybody tell me why quakes are measured 'on the richter scale', after all you don't say 'today the temperature is 15 on the celsius scale'?
that said, with an intensity over 8 is a major quake and there are bound to have been a lot of casualties from collapsing buildings.
i'm sure we can expect to see more quakes in that area after such a large re-alignment of the fault line.
incicentally, can anybody tell me why quakes are measured 'on the richter scale', after all you don't say 'today the temperature is 15 on the celsius scale'?
BrendanS
Well-known member
Well, people usually do qualify temperature scales as being C, F, absolute etc, otherwise you wouldn't know which scale they were referring to.
News programs tend to use the phrase 'on the Richter scale' as most then appreciate what is being talked about. Saying an earthquake was 8.7 wouldn't ring any bells with many lay people unless Richter scale was appended. To scientists, Richter would be appended to differentiate from Mercalli scale.
News programs tend to use the phrase 'on the Richter scale' as most then appreciate what is being talked about. Saying an earthquake was 8.7 wouldn't ring any bells with many lay people unless Richter scale was appended. To scientists, Richter would be appended to differentiate from Mercalli scale.
snowleopard
Active member
what i meant was...
no other scale of measurement is expressed as 'on the xxxx scale'.
we say 20 degrees celsius or 50 decibels, not 20 on the celsius scale or 20 on the bel scale, so why is that expression always used for earthquakes? why don't we say '8 richters'?
no other scale of measurement is expressed as 'on the xxxx scale'.
we say 20 degrees celsius or 50 decibels, not 20 on the celsius scale or 20 on the bel scale, so why is that expression always used for earthquakes? why don't we say '8 richters'?
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