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posted by janrinok on Friday August 14 2015, @06:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the shake,-rattle-and-roll dept.

THIS WEEKEND, A 3.3-magnitude earthquake rattled San Francisco ever so slightly. The small quake, like so many before it, passed, and San Franciscans went back to conveniently ignoring their seismic reality. Magnitude 3.3 earthquakes are clearly no big deal, and the city survived a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in 1989 mostly fine—how how much bigger will the Big One, at 8.0, be than 1989?

Ten times! As smarty-pants among you who understand logarithms may be thinking. But...that's wrong. On the current logarithmic earthquake scale, a whole number increase, like from 7.0 to 8.0, actually means a 32-fold increase in earthquake energy. Even if you can mentally do that math—and feel smug doing it—the logarithmic scale for earthquakes is terrible for intuitively communicating risk. "It's arbitrary," says Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey. "I've never particularly liked it."

[Suggested New Earthquake Scale]: Seismological Review Letters

Maybe SN could suggest a better way to measure earthquakes ...


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by quacking duck on Friday August 14 2015, @07:03PM

    by quacking duck (1395) on Friday August 14 2015, @07:03PM (#222958)

    The reason we have units in the first place is to rescale what we're interested in into a range that we can relate to, which as the opinion author points out, are small numbers on the order of 10. Human brains comprehend that well.

    In other words... there's no point changing to a base 10 measurement, since Americans refuse to switch to anything remotely "metric" anyway.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @08:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @08:28PM (#222994)

    I dont see how you managed to get those words out of that thought.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:52AM (#223106)

      You can't fix stupid.

      Besides, it is almost the opposite of what was said. Metric Nazis want to force a one-size-fits-all unit on people, regardless of whether it makes sense. Don't you know, when you go into a pub, you are supposed to ask the publican for 568.26 ml of beer. If you ask for a pint, you are showing your ignorance. Or, you could ask for 0.568 l of beer, that would be acceptable too.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:13AM (#223114)

        When the recepticle manufacturer catches on it will be 500ml.

      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:29AM

        by captain normal (2205) on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:29AM (#223139)

        Good point...here in the US most beer and ale is sold in 12 ounce bottles or cans. So asking for a six pack of .354882 liter beer does seem a bit awkward.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
        • (Score: 2) by Popeidol on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:18AM

          by Popeidol (35) on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:18AM (#223504) Journal

          Do you currently ask for a six pack of 12 ounce bottles, or just a six pack? I don't think I've ever specified volume except in edge cases (like trying to buy a bunch of sapporo 650ml cans)

          Usually you don't have to ask anything. You grab the beer, take it to the front of the store, and pay. As long as you know what you want there's no problem.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by captain normal on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:14AM

    by captain normal (2205) on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:14AM (#223133)

    Just because you have to use your fingers and toes to count with doesn't mean we all have to. :-))

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.