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The Way We Measure Earthquakes is Stupid

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

AnonTechie writes:

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, Interesting) by FrogBlast on Friday August 14 2015, @06:34PM

    by FrogBlast (21) on Friday August 14 2015, @06:34PM (#222940)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Friday August 14 2015, @06:53PM

    by SubiculumHammer (5191) on Friday August 14 2015, @06:53PM (#222954)

    Best to keep time at one second and adjust the feet moved.

  • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday August 14 2015, @08:18PM

    by jimshatt (978) on Friday August 14 2015, @08:18PM (#222988) Journal
    But I only have two feet! Meters, however, I have plenty of those.

  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:57PM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Saturday August 15 2015, @09:57PM (#223367) Journal

    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

      by FrogBlast (21) on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:58PM (#223381)

      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.