Whenever there's an earthquake you'll hear all over the media that
it's "(blank number) on the Richter Scale." Surprise, the Richter Scale
was abandoned years ago because it was inaccurate. Today we use the
moment magnitude scale, or the MMS.
The MMS measures movement in three directions: north/south, east/west
and, and vertical (up/down). Like the Richter Scale, it's logarithmic,
which, in English means that a small numeric bump equates to a serious
increase in the violence with which the Earth shakes. That's probably
why most people (and many media outlets) haven't noticed that it's a
whole new metric.
more...
No comments:
Post a Comment