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    How Do Scientists Measure The Size of Earthquakes

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    Christeen Garcia
    Scientists measure the size of earthquakes by analyzing seismograms recorded at the surface of the Earth. A short wiggly line with little movement indicates a small earthquake, while a long wiggly line with a lot of movement indicates a large earthquake. The length and size of the wiggle relate to the size of the fault and amount of slip. Scientists can also determine the location of an earthquake using the fact that P waves travel faster than S waves.

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    How Do Scientists Measure The Size of Earthquakes

    Uploaded by

    Christeen Garcia
    7 views2 pages
    Scientists measure the size of earthquakes by analyzing seismograms recorded at the surface of the Earth. A short wiggly line with little movement indicates a small earthquake, while a long wiggly line with a lot of movement indicates a large earthquake. The length and size of the wiggle relate to the size of the fault and amount of slip. Scientists can also determine the location of an earthquake using the fact that P waves travel faster than S waves.

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    How do scientists measure the size of earthquakes

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    How do scientists measure the size of earthquakes

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    Scientists measure the size of earthquakes by analyzing seismograms recorded at the surface of the Earth. A short wiggly line with little movement indicates a small earthquake, while a long wiggly line with a lot of movement indicates a large earthquake. The length and size of the wiggle relate to the size of the fault and amount of slip. Scientists can also determine the location of an earthquake using the fact that P waves travel faster than S waves.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    7 views2 pages

    How Do Scientists Measure The Size of Earthquakes

    Uploaded by

    Christeen Garcia
    Scientists measure the size of earthquakes by analyzing seismograms recorded at the surface of the Earth. A short wiggly line with little movement indicates a small earthquake, while a long wiggly line with a lot of movement indicates a large earthquake. The length and size of the wiggle relate to the size of the fault and amount of slip. Scientists can also determine the location of an earthquake using the fact that P waves travel faster than S waves.

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    How do scientists measure the size of

    earthquakes?

    Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details


    An example of a seismic wave with the P wave and S wave labeled. (Public domain.)

    The size of an earthquake depends on the size of the fault and the amount of slip on the
    fault, but that’s not something scientists can simply measure with a measuring tape
    since faults are many kilometers deep beneath the earth’s surface. So how do they
    measure an earthquake? They use the seismogram recordings made on
    the seismographs at the surface of the earth to determine how large the earthquake
    was (figure 5). A short wiggly line that doesn’t wiggle very much means a small
    earthquake, and a long wiggly line that wiggles a lot means a large earthquake. The
    length of the wiggle depends on the size of the fault, and the size of the wiggle depends
    on the amount of slip.

    The size of the earthquake is called its magnitude. There is one magnitude for each
    earthquake. Scientists also talk about theintensity of shaking from an earthquake, and
    this varies depending on where you are during the earthquake.

    How can scientists tell where the earthquake


    happened?
    Seismograms come in handy for locating earthquakes too, and being able to see the P
    wave and the S wave is important. You learned how P & S waves each shake the
    ground in different ways as they travel through it. P waves are also faster than S waves,
    and this fact is what allows us to tell where an earthquake was. To understand how this
    works, let’s compare P and S waves to lightning and thunder. Light travels faster than
    sound, so during a thunderstorm you will first see the lightning and then you will hear
    the thunder. If you are close to the lightning, the thunder will boom right after the
    lightning, but if you are far away from the lightning, you can count several seconds
    before you hear the thunder. The further you are from the storm, the longer it will take
    between the lightning and the thunder.

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