(this is all for recorded earthquake activity, for any jokes that could be made about unrecorded ones. I’m sure some of you got them ;))
How large was the largest earthquake on the Richter scale, and where did it occur?
How is the system measured? What is a 1 on the Richter scale, what kind of damage can it do? What is a 10 on the Richter scale, what kind of damage can it do?
Probably the same answer as the first one, but what was the longest earthquake, including aftershocks?
First important thing to remember is that the Richter scale is logarithmic, so for instance a quake measuring 7 is 10 times stronger than a 6, and 100 times stronger than a 5, as measured in seismogram wave height. The actual energy released, however, goes up even more steeply: a 7 on the scale is 32 times more powerful than a 6 and over 1000 times more powerful than a 5.
The largest earthquake recorded was a magnitude 9.5 that occurred in Chile in 1960, followed in size by the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska (magnitude 9.2), a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Alaska during 1957, and a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Russia during 1952.
Cite and lots more info at http://tremor.nmt.edu/how.html
You ought to browe around this site:
Damage from an earthquake depends on a lot of factors. A 5.0 can wreak tremendous havoc in a city where the construction is shoddy or just not up to modern standards. That’s why you see so many deaths in places like China or Turkey, particularly in the rural areas, from quakes that barely cause a ripple in other countries.
The earthquake in Alaska in 1964 killed just over 100 persons and caused a lot of damage. Much of the damage and death was from tsunamis, but a good portion was from the quake itself, particularly in Anchorage. A 9.2 quake is catastrophic, regardless of where it strikes and this one was close enough to urban areas that there was significant structural damage. The extent of damage not only is a factor of the magnitude and the quality of construction, but of the location of the epicenter, depth of the slippage, etc. IANAS(eismologist), but having survived a major quake such as this one, one tends to educate oneself.