Worse than I ever thought.

When we had planned to look at the change the landscape underwent, I never thought it would be this drastic with regards to the destruction of buildings. I have read about the building regulations of Japan and they have always been immaculate with regards to earthquakes, having learned from the devastating Hanshin earthquake in 2005 where 200, 000 buildings collapsed from the shake. Since, the Japanese Government has poured money into ensuring that such preventable catastrophe's never occur again.

But how does it work?

It seems there are various means to improving how "earthquake-proof" a building is, all which Japan employ much like the west coast of North America on the other side of the Pacific ing of Fire. This is essentially what The Washington Post had to say about it.

Physics students should be more aware with the term resonance. During an earthquake buildings oscillate (move - like a pendulum for example) yet all buildings naturally don't respond the same to an earthquake. This is due to resonance. If the frequency of oscillation of the ground is similar to the natural frequency of the building, terrible destruction may occur. This is why low buildings are more effected by short, high frequency waves while low frequency waves could topple a huge skyscraper.

In Japan, for a building under 3 stories tall,

New buildings shorter than three stories are required to have reinforced walls and foundation slabs of a certain thickness, meaning “there is not a whole lot of design to it,” Hamburger said.

Japan have many different building regulations, each depending on the height of the building in question. For mid-sized buildings, up to 100ft, it s common to build them on foundations of rubber or polymer in order to keep them raised from the ground. This is a means to weaken the intensity of the vibrations. They slide from side to side in order to swiftly dissipate the lateral motions and converting the kinetic energy into heat energy.

An alternative for short to mid-sized buildings is to insert hundreds of Teflon coated pegs into the foundations so the building moves more fluidly if an earthquake occurs. These are both examples of the technique"Base isolation" which removes the building from the ground as if it's slightly floating.

The true engineering, and by far the most fascinating, is seen in skyscrapers. A wonderful example I found is this video where we can see quite visibly the high-rises wobbling during the earthquake in Japan.

All modern skyscrapers are designed to sway, up to ten feet at times,

“You will get shelves tipping over and copy machines running across the floor,” said van de Lindt, but structural damage will be minimal, even when the top of the building lurches 10 feet or more in each direction. “It’s like a yardstick when you bend it — it snaps back without any damage.”

When we had planned to look at the change the landscape underwent, I never thought it would be this drastic with regards to the destruction of buildings. I have read about the building regulations of Japan and they have always been immaculate with regards to earthquakes, having learned from the devastating Hanshin earthquake in 2005 where 200, 000 buildings collapsed from the shake. Since, the Japanese Government has poured money into ensuring that such preventable catastrophe's never occur again.

There are also examples of hollow walls, housing sliding metal panels to perform a similar task. Also, perhaps the most innovative of all is the use of 'oil-dampening' means of earthquake-proofing a building. This is when an oil tank is placed at the top of a building and in the case of an earthquake sways in the opposite direction to the building itself.

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As a result of these careful design techniques, the Telegraph has this to say about the Japanese structure designs.

Damage to buildings in Tokyo was slight as a result of Japan’s stringent building regulations that ensure that skyscrapers sway in during a quake, but don’t collapse... Another method allows the base of a building to move semi-independently to its superstructure, reducing the shaking caused by a quake.

But this isn't to say that Japan hasn't suffered huge collateral damage as many wooden homes and buildings showed zero resistance to the tsunami that was soon to follow the earthquake and over 100 aftershocks. The whole east coast is devastated.

Below I have posted interesting online maps that really outline how bad the damage really is.