National Richter Scale Day

National Richter Scale Day is an American holiday commemorating the creation of the Richter Scale. It allowed people to measure the intensity of earthquakes to find out how destructive they were. It is celebrated annually on April 26.

History

The history of National Richter Scale Day has no details, but we celebrate it on C. Richter’s birthday.

Charles Richter was born in Ohio, but spent a conscious part of his life in Los Angeles. He graduated from several universities, where he studied physics intensively. His passion for science motivated him to begin putting his knowledge into practice.

While studying at the Institute of Technology in California, Charles came across an article by a seismologist from Japan, Kiu Wadachi. The young man became very interested in its contents – there the researcher considered earthquakes, depending on their depth. Richter began to develop a scale, which could be used to estimate the power of natural cataclysm. As the basis for the calculations, he took the energy released by an earthquake, divided it into 10 intervals, and transformed it into a point system. At the same time, the difference between each score was 10 times (i.e., at a score of 2, 10 times more energy is released than at 1, and so on).

Interesting facts

• The scale was developed by C. Richter led the development of the scale together with his German colleague B. Gutenberg.
• Today, the Richter scale is the universally recognized universal way to measure the power of earthquakes. Its counterparts have never been widely used.
• Destruction usually begins at magnitude 5. At magnitude 1, an earthquake is not felt.

How to celebrate

Learn more about the Richter Scale. Find out what the most destructive earthquakes were in the last century. What was their magnitude?

Tell about the holiday on social networks. Ask users if they witnessed the earthquake in real life. What were their impressions?

When National Richter Scale Day celebrated in 2024?

National Richter Scale Day is observed on April 26 each year.

Observations