The place with the highest magnitude on the Richter scale took place in the Solomon Islands on January 3, 2010. Luckily, no fatalities were recorded.
There is no absolute top to the Richter scale, although the largest earthquake ever recorded by mankind was the Valdivia earthquake in Chile that was the equivalent of 9.5 on the Richter scale in 1960. While no earthquake any stronger has ever been recorded, the impact that caused the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula about 65 million years ago has been calculated to have been the equivalent of about 13.0 on the Richter scale.
the safest place during an earthquake is probably in the highest place you can be
There was a really big earthquake in the sea off Japan . About 9 on the Richter scale. This then caused the tidal wave.
In 1811-1812 the New Madrid earthquakes took place. I'm not sure if this is the one you mean, but I hope so. The 1812 Febuary earthquake had a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale.
The city that was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1931 was Napier, New Zealand. The earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, caused widespread destruction and resulted in significant loss of life.
Some good questions about earthquakes are:What is an earthquake?How long do earthquakes last?Is there an 'earthquake season' or 'earthquake weather'?Where is the safest place to be in an earthquake?Will the ground open up during an earthquake?What is a seismometer, seismograph, and a seismogram?When was the seismograph invented?What is the Richter Scale?Do many small earthquakes prevent larger earthquakes?Can we predict earthquakes?What is liquefaction?
The Richter Scale is a Magnitude scale - it is used to calculate the magnitude of small and medium sized earthquakes (those with a magnitude less than 7). The other scales most commonly used for recording Earthquakes are the Moment Magnitude Scale and the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale.The Intensity scale of the Earthquake measures the effect of the earthquake at a particular location. In general it is highest at the epicenter and gets lower as you go further. The value of intensity changes from place to place.The Moment Magnitude scale measures the actual amount of energy released during the Earthquake and is derived based on the rigidity / stiffness of the crust, the length of fault that slipped and it's cross sectional area.An Earthquake has only one value of magnitude, and it does not change from place to place. The scale is logarithmic.However the now outmoded Richter Scale used a different method of deriving the energy release based on the maximum amplitude of the seismic waves detected on seismometers. As such it was a measurement of the local magnitude (i.e. local to the seismometer) rather than the absolute magnitude of the earthquake.
The weakest earthquake recorded is usually referred to as a microearthquake, which typically has a magnitude below 2.0 on the Richter scale. These earthquakes are often not felt by humans and are mainly detected by seismographs.
The world's deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1556 in central China of an 8.0 Magnitude. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. These caves collapsed during the earthquake, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly earthquake struck in Tangshan, China, where more than 250,000 people were killed.
The scale used to describe the amount of damage an earthquake causes is the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale. This scale measures the intensity of shaking and the resulting damage at a specific location, rather than the earthquake's magnitude, which is measured on the Richter scale. The MMI scale ranges from I (not felt) to XII (total destruction), with each level representing a different degree of impact on structures and people.
Charles Richter attended A school in some place somewhere