What is the relationship between earthquakes power and nuclear explosions?
How to compared power of earthquake with nuclear explosion?
[Physics] the relationship between earthquakes power and nuclear explosions
nuclear-physics
nuclear-physics
What is the relationship between earthquakes power and nuclear explosions?
How to compared power of earthquake with nuclear explosion?
Best Answer
I'm guessing that alberta would like to know what the relationship might be between earthquake magnitudes and say, the energy of an nuclear bomb. First, it's given that the energy of one tonne of TNT is ~4.2 Gigajoules. Next, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale on Richter magnitudes lists comparisons of earthquake magnitudes to TNT energy.
A weak earthquake of magnitude 3 has energy of 2.0 Gigajoules, 0.48 tonnes of TNT, or of a sizable chemical bomb. Since earthquake energies increase by a factor of 32 per magnitude, a modest magnitude 5 earthquake has an energy of 2.0 Terajoules, 480 tonnes of TNT, or a 0.48 megaton nuclear device. The 1960 Chili 9.5 magnitude earthquake, the strongest on record, generated TNT equivalent of 11 Exajoules, 2.7*10$^{12}$tonnes of TNT, or that of a 2.7 billion tonne nuclear bomb!!!
Since earthquake magnitude energy varies with a factor of 32/magnitude, small magnitude variations result in large energy variations.