Research (Chapter 2)

After looking into a lot about earthquakes and the primary and secondary outcomes and effects i then went onto researching how earthquakes are measured in my for my next chapter for the iBook.

One site where i found out about how earthquakes were measured was from the links below.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-are-earthquakes.html

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/kids/eqscience.php

Both of these sites can some great content on how earthquakes are measured as well as descriptions on the Richter scale where one of the sites discuss what the values mean with a certain magnitude and what type of earthquake it means its most likely to be. 

This is what it states:

• Earthquakes measuring less than 4.0 magnitude occur in small areas and might not even be noticed, much less cause any serious damage.
• Earthquakes measuring 4.0–4.9 magnitude cover a larger area. They are felt, but damage is light.
• You start to see some damage with a 5.0-magnitude earthquake, starting with poorly constructed buildings.
• Higher up on the Richter scale, you see greater damage over a greater area.
• The largest recorded earthquake was the 9.5-magnitude Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960. This quake spawned numerous tsunamis that caused damage as far away as Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines.

This is quite an interesting source of information as it helps to give people an understanding ofthe Richter scale and the higher the magnitude the larger and more destructive the earthquake is which is quite usual and interesting. This is something i will include in my content when i come to discuss fully about the Richer scale and what the values measured mean.

I then went onto researching the strongest and weakest earthquakes ever recorded and found out that these were the strongest earthquakes. 

Here is the top five strongest earthquakes ever recorded:

5. Tōhoku Japan earthquake (2011)

This earthquake occurred on Match 11 2011 and had a magnitude of 9.0 and resulted in a large tsunami causing over 15,000 deaths, over 6000 injured and over 2500 people went missing.  4.4 million people in northern eastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water. The tsunami resulted in a nuclear disaster and the earthquake resulted in a loss of around $14.5 to $36.6 billion.

4. Kamchatka Russia earthquake (1952)

This earthquake occurred in November 4^th and was originally thought to have a magnitude of 8.2 however it was later revised of a magnitude of 9 in later years. The earthquake resulted in a loss of  $1 million from property damage, including many lives lost.

3. Indian Ocean earthquake (2004)

The Indian Ocean earthquake is the 3^rd strongest earthquake and occurred on December 26^th in 2004. This earthquake led into about 230,000 deaths from 14 countries, 500,000 injured and 5 million people lost their homes. The cost of the damage from the earthquake and tsunami was about $10 billion.

2. Alaskan Earthquake (1964)

This great earthquake occurred in Alaska in South-eastern Alaska on March 27 in 1964. This is the second largest earthquake recorded The earthquake caused not only damage to buildings but landslides, a tsunami and resulted in 200 people killed by the tsunami. Approximately 300-400 million dollars of damage was caused in Alaska.

1.Valdivia earthquake (1960)

The strongest earthquake ever is the Valdivia earthquake, which was on 22^nd of May in 1960 with a magnitude of 9.5, the highest magnitude ever recorded on the Richter scale.  1,655 people were killed, 3,000 were injured and 2,000,000 people were homeless. The cost of the damages $550 million from the damage in southern Chile.

Here's the link i went to gather this information and re-worded it afterwards.

http://www.elist10.com/top-10-biggest-earthquake-ever-recorded-history/