What is Moment Magnitude?

Engineering Fundamentals: An Introduction to Engineering (MindTap Course List)
5th Edition
ISBN:9781305084766
Author:Saeed Moaveni
Publisher:Saeed Moaveni
Chapter18: Mathematics In Engineering
Section18.6: Calculus
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What is Moment Magnitude?

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MOMENT MAGNITUDE :

-Moment Magnitude is a most commonly used to measure the size of microseism and is also used to measure earthquake size for very large earthquakes.

-Moment magnitude  was first introduced in the year 1979 by Hanks and Kanamori . 

-It measures the size of events in terms of how much energy is released, that is, it relates to the amount of movement by rock (i.e. the distance of movement along a fault / fracture) and the area of fault / fracture surface.  

- Moment magnitude scales are logarithmic scale, for example, so an increase of one unit of magnitude on a magnitude scale is equivalent to an increase of 10 times the amplitude recorded by a seismograph and approximately 30 times the energy. 

- it can provide estimate of earthquake size which is valid over the complete range of magnitudes, a unique property that was not available in other magnitude measuring scales.

 

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