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The digital duo Josh and Chuck deconstruct your world.
Podcast Transcript | Listen to the Podcast Now
How Earthquakes Work | June 30, 2009
Josh
Right and a nine’s 100 times as powerful as a seven.
Chuck
How ’bout that?
Josh
Yeah.
Chuck
That’s serious business.
Josh
What the Richter scale does is it measures the wave amplitude -
Chuck
Right.
Josh
Of the seismic energy of a quake and so that’s the one you always hear about, like I talked about that one in Papua New Guinea was a 6.7.
Chuck
Right which is large, anything below a three generally doesn’t get much attention unless it’s just a little tremor, a micro quake. It’s kinda hard to say.
Josh
And that’s the vast majority of earthquakes are three or less, right?
Chuck
Yeah you won’t see anything below a four; you won’t see a lot of damage going on but anything seven and above is pretty serious business. And the record is 9.5.
Josh
Um-hum, I looked this up.
Chuck
Did you?
Josh
1960 Chile, right. You ready for some stats of mine?
Chuck
Oh look at you.
Josh
Imagine a 9.5 on the Richter scale, it’s immense.
Chuck
Devastating.
Josh
There were 1665 people killed, 3,000 injured and 200,000 homeless in Chile alone.
Chuck
Wow.
Josh
Along with $550 million in property damage.
Chuck
And what year was this?
Josh
1960.
Chuck
So that’s 1960 dollars?
Josh
That’s the impression I have, yeah.
Chuck
Wow.
Josh
It created a tsunami that killed 61 people and caused $75 million worth of damage all the way in Hawaii.
Chuck
You’re kidding.
>
Josh
And in Japan, there were 138 deaths and $50 million worth of damage.
Chuck
Wow.
Josh
Yeah and it just kind of goes on from there.
Chuck
You know what they said about that 1810/11 earthquake, in Missouri was that the church bells from Boston rang from the reverberation.
Josh
I know that’s nuts.
Chuck
Yeah, I wanna verify that but it sounds -
Josh
That’s a big ‘old earthquake right there.
Josh
Sure.
Chuck
Some apartments in L.A. actually were reinforced; you could tell like in the walls, they would have these bars running up and stuff.
Josh
Yeah, as far as I know like Japan’s the cutting edge of earthquake proofing.
Chuck
Of everything.
Josh
Yeah.
Chuck
Yeah, a lot of earthquakes in Japan, huh?
Josh
Yeah and robots.
Chuck
And volcanoes.
Josh
Uh-huh.
Chuck
[Laughing] Where are we now Josh, you wanna talk about Richter scale yet or?
Josh
I think that’s the inevitable conclusion.
Chuck
So Josh the Richter scale as most people know records a magnitude of the earthquake. It’s logarithmic so that means that whole number jump means it increases tenfold so a six on the Richter scale is actually 10 times as powerful as a five.