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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 ...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday August 14 2015, @06:24PM
Because the precision of measurement goes down as the scale of the earthquake goes up. A logarithmic scale keeps error bars in the same neighborhood for all earthquakes.
It's not great for lay understanding of the phenomenon, but that's really better understood in terms of damage and deaths anyways. An 8.0 in Emptyland, Alaska is going to be less noteworthy than a 5.0 in LA.
So let the scientists have their measures, that are useful for calculation and categorization, and don't make it the focus for the public.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @06:50PM
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. The scale the author is proposing is a linear scale. That is nice to get the point across that one quake was 1000 times "bigger" than another, but the problem it runs into is that we can't relate to it. This turns into "one, two, three, . . ., infinity!" It is like the Scoville scale for hot peppers. What does it mean that a bell pepper is 0, a peperonicini is 250, a jalapeno is 5000, and a ghost pepper is 1000000. You can't relate to that scale (probably because I would bet that we experience chili heat logarithmicly). You don't say "Wow, this ghost pepper is, like, 200 times hotter than that jalapeno!"
(Score: 3, Funny) by quacking duck on Friday August 14 2015, @07:03PM
In other words... there's no point changing to a base 10 measurement, since Americans refuse to switch to anything remotely "metric" anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @08:28PM
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
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
When the recepticle manufacturer catches on it will be 500ml.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:29AM
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.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:18AM
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
Just because you have to use your fingers and toes to count with doesn't mean we all have to. :-))
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Friday August 14 2015, @06:52PM
It's not great for lay understanding of the phenomenon, but that's really better understood in terms of damage and deaths anyways.
Exactly! It's not meant to be easily understood by non-scientists because it doesn't need to be. What exactly is your average person supposed to do with the knowledge of how "big" an earthquake was? The only reason people want to know is so they can talk about it the next day at work and compare it to other earthquakes. You and I can't do anything useful with that knowledge, so why try to change something that doesn't matter?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:37PM
I don't think you read the article. One of the main complaints of "The Scale" is that it is meaningless from a science perspective, this is because science likes units and "The Scale" does not have them. so it is useless from a science perspective, useless from a news perspective (they don't understand it), and useless from a Joe Schmoe perspective (logwhat???). So why the hell use it?
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Friday August 14 2015, @08:02PM
Actually it sounds like the scale does have units. They just choose to use a very odd base for the logarithm.
There is nothing wrong - in fact, everything right - about using a log scale. However, they should have used either base 10 or the natural log with base e.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:59PM
Indeed, with a direct base 10, it would mean that increasing the magnitude by 1 would mean increasing the energy by one order of magnitude.
However, in the end the scale is based on decimal values: A difference of 2 in the magnitude corresponds to a factor of 1000.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by kryptonianjorel on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:10AM
If the scale doesn't have units, what the hell are we measuring? "Well that felt like a big one. Lets call it a 6.3"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FrogBlast on Friday August 14 2015, @06:34PM
Based on the two earthquakes I really noticed, I think period and amplitude would suffice. "People in affected areas can expect to move five feet back and forth in three quarters of a second." I can imagine about what that feels like.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday August 14 2015, @06:53PM
Best to keep time at one second and adjust the feet moved.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday August 14 2015, @08:18PM
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:57PM
No good. We're going to need it in football fields per library of congress. Or, ummm....
(Score: 2) by FrogBlast on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:58PM
My original suggestion was going to be "number of garbage trucks that seem to be driving by" (hence the title). I think feet per second is meeting you all more than half way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @06:44PM
Shallow ones, I think, give nasty sharp jarring, but deeper ones give slower growling rumbling.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 14 2015, @06:45PM
3.3 magnitude = 5.6 gigajoules = 5.6 x 109 J = 1.34 tons of TNT
6.9 magnitude = 1.4 petajoules = 1.4 x 1015 J = 340 kilotons of TNT
7.0 magnitude = 2 petajoules = 2.0 x 1015 J = 480 kilotons of TNT
8.0 magnitude = 63 petajoules = 6.3 x 1016 J = 15 megatons of TNT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale [wikipedia.org]
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ [wolframalpha.com]
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(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:57AM
Yes, but from the article:
But wait, you say, she's wrong because it is right there in the Wiki! I read it on the Internet, so it must be true.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:43AM
If you had continued reading the paragraph you quoted, you would have found these bits:
Back to evil Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The author wants to use a unit called Aki, with 1 Aki equal to 1021 dynes-cm or 1014 N-m. Hmm... N-m... aka a newton-meter... what could that be a measurement [wikipedia.org] of?
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:55PM
So 1 Aki = 100 Terajoule? Then why not simply say the latter?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:02PM
Lucy Jones seems to want to normalize the imperceptible tremors to a fraction of 1 unit, small earthquakes from 1 to low thousands of units, and then hundreds of thousands all the way to billions for the actual and biggest earthquakes. But it's all joules in the end.
Jones wants this unit so that the public and journalists can understand earthquake strength more intuitively than "7.0 mag is 32 times stronger than 6.0 mag".
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(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 16 2015, @10:34AM
Let's rewrite his statement to Terajoule:
So how are his Akis better, again? Heck, even the "reporting threshold" is perfect with Terajoule
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 16 2015, @10:49AM
Err, 1014 = 100 terajoules = 1 Aki.
Your point pretty much stands though. We could express all earthquakes in petajoules.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by calzone on Friday August 14 2015, @06:47PM
The scale is actually pretty good imo. Just tweak it into a lay-person's experiences.
0-5 and you're ok, going from "something shook?" to "wow, that was kind of rough"
5-10 and you're going to go from "crap, this may not turn out well" to "omfg the world is over!"
Anything else is overkill and makes it less comprehensible.
Time to leave Soylent News [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:01PM
Indicating energy levels is irrelevant for most people. How two people experience the same earthquake depends on so many factors - how deep the epicentre is, how far you are from the epicentre, what soil types are between you and the epicentre, what underground topology is, what kind of structure you're in and so on. It's a long list.
Other scales like modified Mercalli index try to indicate the magnitude in terms of how it affects the observer - this means the value is different for two different observers in two different locations. This is better, but doesn't satisfy the news organizations that prefer one number for everyone.
People always try to map complex information to a single value with little success (usually). I mean, how many people actually fit a "large" shirt?
The answer is: there will never be an earthquake measurement system that satisfies everyone.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @07:04PM
Less than 1 = Can't feel it.
1-2 = Bug Fart.
2-3 = Did you feel that?
3-4 = WTF was that?
4-5 = Feels like having sex.
5-6 = There goes Big Bertha walking down the street.
6-7 = Hide under a desk.
7-8 = Run.
8-9 = Pray.
9-10 = Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday August 14 2015, @07:10PM
The Way We Measure Earthquakes is Stupid
No, what the author really meant to say is: "The unit of measurement we use for the masses to understand the effect of an earthquake is less than ideal." Not that I'm trying to be pedantic, but "measure it different!" is not the same as "can you clarify this for us?" (Can you tell I run into this sort of stuff on a daily basis at work?
Maybe SN could suggest a better way to measure earthquakes ...
I can tell you a few different ways it has been explained to me: "A big truck drove by.", "A jolt.", and "I fell out of my bed." With that in mind, maybe a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is "didnt' feel it" and 10 was "building leveled". The only problem is that you'd have to assign a score per-region. "The epi-center was an 8 but the neighboring city was a 4."
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 4, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Friday August 14 2015, @07:17PM
We get by with 5 categories of hurricanes, 5 categories of tornados. Why do we (as civilians) need to viscerally understand the total energy released in a quake?
I propose the Kilroy scale:
K0 - Small, of interest only to geologists
K1 - Half the population will notice that the quake occurred. No damage noted.
K2 - Everyone will notice the event, light damage noted to unreinforced buildings. Most people will say "Earthquake!" and wait for it to pass.
K3 - Unreinforced buildings cracked/destroyed, light damage to earthquake-resistant buildings. Many people will move to shelter (doorway, etc). Need only local emergency services unless the majority of the population is in poorly constructed housing.
K4 - Widespread damage to earthquake resistant buildings. Need regional emergency response (State, etc) to manage injuries/infrastructure damage.
K5 - Catastrophic damage. Most or all buildings badly damaged or destroyed. Need National (for large countries) or International (for small countries) emergency services.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KilroySmith on Friday August 14 2015, @07:21PM
Well, hell, a comment above made mine superfluous.
The Modified Mercalli scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale/ [wikipedia.org] does exactly what I was trying to do.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 14 2015, @11:58PM
Those scales only work for inhabited areas, and depend on the quality of the ground and what's built on it.
Cute for newscasters, but highly unscientific, leading to the need to use a different scale for serious work, confusion at the scientist/layman interface, and nothing gained...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrNemesis on Friday August 14 2015, @07:38PM
When I was doing geology circa 2000 (when TFA was puslished by the looks of things?), using the Richter scale was already old hat - all the earthquakes were measured in moment magnitude [wikipedia.org] as per the article mentions. News reports even managed to make using the Richter scale even more meaningless by not even saying which magnitude measurement they were using or... worse still, taking the moment magnitude (MMS) issued by the $seismometer_owner and calling it a Richter scale measurement (was always a drinking forfeit if you heard that on the news). But it is at least broadly compatible with the Richter scale in terms of the numbers being broadly similar.
Incidentally, in case it's not common knowledge - earthquakes are typically measured by a) a number of different magnitude calculations (of which MMS was the preferred method I was taught), to estimate the amount of energy released (i.e. it's the same figure regardless of distance) and b) an intensity scale, typically the Modified Mercalli [wikipedia.org] which measures local effects. As such an earthquake is always of a given magnitude, but the relative intensity of it typically drops off with distance from the epicentre.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 2) by No Respect on Friday August 14 2015, @07:40PM
This sounds like the time honored "Let's Dumb It Down" argument.
What about decibels? They're hard to understand, too. It's arbitrary don'tcha know?
Great respect around here for the USGS, but Lucy Jones sounds like she's on a mission to get the Richter Scale replaced with the Jones Scale.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Friday August 14 2015, @07:58PM
All measurement systems are arbitrary. Feet, furlongs, angstroms, buckets. metres - none of these have any meaning outside of someone's choice of how to measure stuff.
As regards earthquakes, the needs of earthquake scientists and similar professionals are one thing. What Joe Public needs is entirely different.
The current magnitude measurements are just fine, particularly since they're reported after the fact anyhow.
The average person doesn't need or want to know exactly what a Magnitude 4.6 earthquake means, just that it's worse than the 3.9 'quake they remember from last year, but not as bad as the 7.4 quake they saw in the news last week.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Gravis on Friday August 14 2015, @08:18PM
seems like you know exactly jack shit about SI base units. perhaps you should read up before demonstrating your ignorance again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_base_unit [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 14 2015, @10:20PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:17AM
There is a strong vocal minority here who hail metric units with unquestionable praise. These units were not created by Man, they were a gift bestowed upon Mankind by the French. They are not arbitrary, they are French! If you dare question them you get replies such as "I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
Forgive them for they are simple-minded folk. If you spend your days on the farm filling bushels full of apples, it is apparently easier to talk of how many liters (sorry, litres) you filled that day, instead of just counting the number of bushels you filled. And forget about how many cups of water you drink, or how many pints you drink, counting them is too hard. You're supposed to change your lifestyle and now consume in units of half litres, because the hallmark of a decent unit system is that you change the way you live to match your units, not establish units that make sense in the way you live your life.
So go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:22PM
What? You're suggesting that ""The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 ⁄ 299792458 of a second." is arbitrary?
Or ""The kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram."?
Then again who the hell decreed that the ""(a) definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K."
Why not 725 k.? What's so damned special about zero? And who decided that zero was there, and not somewhere else on the temperature scale?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Friday August 14 2015, @09:26PM
Alternative scales like the Mercalli scale are less relevant geologically, but quite useful, this one is interested in the surface damage at the epicenter.
In fact Italian news outlet used to employ this one, then they resorted to Richter. Likely because of our tradition of obscuring information: when they talk about the stock exchange they tell you the variation in percentage without telling the absolute value of the index...
TLDR, when a quake happen I first want to know if the house is still up.
From wikipedia, the twelve degrees of the Mercalli scale.
I. Not felt Not felt except by a very few under especially favorable conditions.
II. Weak Felt only by a few persons at rest, especially on upper floors of buildings.
III. Weak Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck. Duration estimated.
IV. Light Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.
V. Moderate Felt by nearly everyone; many awakened. Some dishes, windows broken. Unstable objects overturned. Pendulum clocks may stop.
VI. Strong Felt by all, many frightened. Some heavy furniture moved; a few instances of fallen plaster. Damage slight.
VII. Very Strong Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken.
VIII. Severe Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned.
IX. Violent Damage considerable in specially designed structures; well-designed frame structures thrown out of plumb. Damage great in substantial buildings, with partial collapse. Buildings shifted off foundations.
X. Extreme Some well-built wooden structures destroyed; most masonry and frame structures destroyed with foundations. Rails bent.
XI. Extreme Few, if any (masonry), structures remain standing. Bridges destroyed. Broad fissures in ground. Underground pipe lines completely out of service. Earth slumps and land slips in soft ground. Rails bent greatly.
XII. Extreme Damage total. Waves seen on ground surfaces. Lines of sight and level distorted. Objects thrown upward into the air.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DNied on Friday August 14 2015, @09:39PM
To be fair, earthquakes are stupid.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Sunday August 16 2015, @01:00AM
instead of dumbing down the science, why not smarten up the people? I fear the world we are heading in to making things easier for the sake of getting a better score (I'm speaking for the United States). This easy ride is not what made this nation.