Earthquake Shaking Intensity Meter

There is no doubting the importance of a seismograph in measuring earthquakes. Its digital graphic recording, called a seismogram, captures all the ground motion caused by seismic waves with amazing accuracy. And because there is a network of these instruments around the world, we can get an accurate picture of an earthquake's strength and duration almost immediately after it occurs.

How do you measure the earthquake shaking intensity?

The Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. This means that we can get a very accurate measure of an earthquake's strength and devastation potential.
There are 3 ways of measuring earthquakes:

1. The Richter Scale is the first widely-used method that uses a formula based on the amplitude of the largest wave recorded on a specific type of seismometer and the distance between the earthquake and the seismometer.
2. The Moment Magnitude Scale is preferred today because it works over a wider range of earthquake sizes and is applicable globally.
3. The Mercalli Scale is another way to measure the strength of an earthquake that is use to the observations of the people who experienced the earthquake, and the amount of damage that occurred, also to estimate it's intensity

Which scale is used in intensity of shaking?

There have been many different earthquake intensity scales developed over the centuries, but the Modified Mercalli (MM) Intensity Scale is currently used in the United States. This scale is highly accurate and persuasive it should continue to be used to evaluate earthquakes.

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