Earthquake calculator

[DontTalk]

As one might notice I was not around much lately. Which is partly through social obligations, the fact that I have to start learning for my end of semester exams now and that I was actually putting a bit of work into something.

That something is writing a little calculator for calculating the energy of earthquakes.

Here one can find it. One has to download it (with my bit of javascript knowledge it would be anoying to write an online vesion and I wouldn't know on which website I can publish it either way, so dowload it is).


I will probably write a page on how to use it and how to by hand calculate the energy of earthquakes soon.

But before that I would like to make sure that it works like it is supposed to, so if someone could look into the Read me file and see if I correctly reversed the formulas I have written there from the sources listed in the file and if the results that the calculator gives are (except for rounding errors) correct using that formulas that would be nice.

I think they are as far as I tested, but better be sure Òâä.


Edit

List on things to be changed:

-make inputting negative distances lead to error

-make inputting distances larger than half the circumfence of the earth lead to error

 

[RavenSupreme]

Does it only calculates the radiated seismic waves or he entire seismic moment? The former is rather easy to calculate but only gives less than 1 percent of the tot released energy of the earthquake with bad luck, whereas the latter calculates the total amount of energy released by the quake

 

[Antvasima]

Kkapoios linked to some Earthquake calculators within this blog. If they do the same thing as your program, perhaps it is not necessary to upload it?

Also, it might be a good idea if somebody could link to said earthquake calculators within one of our calculation guide pages, alternately create a separate page for earthquake calculations, with them included.

 

[DontTalk]

@RavenSupreme: The entire seismic moment is rarely applicable to fiction. The reason why its energy is so much higher than that of the wave is the gigantic energy loss that comes from the friction of the movement of a whole continental plate and the energy lost in order to fragment stone at the borders. Total Seismic moment is hence not used for anything, but actual real earthquakes.

What the calculator does is that it takes distance to epicenter and which effects are seen at that distance and calculates the energy that is released in form of seismic waves (the "other" value in the calculator) and the energy a meteor would need to cause an earthquake like that. I would also have added total seismic moment, but I haven't found out how that value is calculate from richter values, so I just added an outout for the richter value as well so that one can plug it into the "totl seismic moment" calculator should one ever want to calculate the energy release for a real earthquake out of some reasons.


@Antvasima: As said, I plan on writing a page on how the math works some time soon.

The calculator is a bit of a compilation of the ones KKapoios links. It uses the same formulas as the earth impact calculator, but has the advantage that while one has to use trial and error on that calculator until one has input a meteor that causes a earthquake like one would like, my just reverses the formula so that one can enter the values one wants directly and also instantly gets the energy values. In other words the advantage is that its easier and more confortable to use. Well, for mobile users I might just explain how one does it with the given calculators as well, when writing the page.

 

[CrossverseCrisis]

Hmm....so this is like an App your working on, DT? Or just....whatever?

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thank you for the help.

 

[Alakabamm]

So this is an application of the formulas in the meteor impact effects study, right?

 

[DontTalk]

yes, mostly. There is one other formula from another calculator there to calculate the energy of the seismic waves, but except for that its that study.