Earthquake Shaking Intensity/Violence?

Question

Does the intensity or violence of the shaking of an earthquake get higher as the magnitude of the earthquake increases or does it reach a maximum at a certain magnitude? In other words, is the difference between a 7.0 and a 7.5 earthquake simply the amount of time that the shaking lasts or is the actual shaking from a 7.5 earthquake more intense/violent than the shaking from a 7.0 earthquake (or a 6.0 earthquake)?

Answer 1

Dear friend when you talk about intensity or the amount of destruction Richter scale is not directly connected with it. Richter scale measures the amount of energy released at the point called focus. The destruction or intensity no doubt will be more for every increase in Richter scale. The intensity of effect at a particular place depends upon many factors.1.Magnitude in Richter scale,2. Geological condition,3.Distance from epicenter,4. Types of construction of these buildings,5. The earthquake frequency to the natural frequency of the buildings. If the frequency of the earthquakes are high damages of low height buildings are more.For low frequency earthquakes high rise buildings will be damaged leaving the short buildings in tact. But the shaking only increases by ten fold for each Richter scale and reduced by inverse square of the distance.The amount of energy released will increase by 31.7 times more for each Richter scale.See the chart for idea of energy release for each Richter scale.To know the intensity you must study about Mercalli scale.

Approximate TNT (Tri nitro telecom )  Yield for Seismic Energy                    

                       Richter scale

                                   1                     30 lbs  

                                   2. 1 ton

     3. 29 ton

     4. 1000 ton

     5. 32000 ton

     6. 1 million ton

     7. 32 million ton

     8. 1 billion ton

     9. 32 billion ton

    10 1 trillion ton.

Answer 2

more intense..

Answer 3

every 1 increase in magnitude is 10 folds as strong as the next.

ex: a mag. 1 compared to a mag. 4 is not 4 times stronger...

its actually 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 times stronger.

(or something like this, forgot the math =) but it's close)