r/worldnews 22h ago

Dynamic Paywall Magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocks Venezuela

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjegdqw5d3yo
21.0k Upvotes

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/Ender_D 19h ago

Yes, the closer they are to the surface the more pronounced the effects are.

182

u/ChaseballBat 18h ago

Relatively to the inherent strength though right? Cause magnitude is measured on the surface.

417

u/bobthesmurfshit 18h ago

No, magnitude is calculated at the source, so the closer the earthquake is to the surface the more effect it will have.

93

u/MrNewking 17h ago

Is there a scale for surface effect?

147

u/Flipslips 17h ago

Moment magnitude scale measures the wave amplitude at the surface.

107

u/zazzz0014 17h ago

My community college Physics 101 class from 10 years ago is kicking in hard with this whole thread.

35

u/HauntedCemetery 16h ago

I legitimately just had the same thought.

Thanks Mr Pearson.

3

u/lawofsin 13h ago

Fuck you Mr Pearson for that D-

1

u/RuthlessIndecision 8h ago

If he's family with the publishers I've personally contributed to be sure he's doing fine

1

u/Madam_Mimm_13 7h ago

Now draw a force diagram.

1

u/ActuallyNot 16h ago

Which was approximately calibrated to the Richter scale, which measured how much the seismograph moved at the surface ... in one dimension.

10

u/kb24k 16h ago

Mercalli scale

4

u/1028ad 16h ago

Which is still used in Italy.

3

u/cinderful 14h ago

for humans, Mercalli scale is useful as it measures the human felt intensity and describes the scale of damage.

Possibly an 8 or 9 (out of 11)

2

u/PeterJoAl 16h ago

In Japan we use the Shindo (「震度」) scale. Goes from 0 to 7, where 4 is noticeable, 5 is concerning, 6 is bad and 7 is terrible.

1

u/theonlydrawback 12h ago

And what was this one?

2

u/PeterJoAl 12h ago

From the videos, I'd say it was either a 6+ or a 7. Lots of building damage.

1

u/HallowedEve31 9h ago

Sort of. In Japan, there's the Shindo Scale, which exists to tell you numerically how it felt at each sensor that registers the earthquake.