On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 12:44:37PM +0100, John Whelan wrote:
<snip>
> One last point: Who do people always "7 on the Richter scale" or perhaps a
> little better "Magnitude of 7"? The correct usage should be "7 Richter(s)".
> After all we don't say 240 on the Volt scale, or 0.1 on the Tesla scale
> etc.. Just a thought.
<snip>
n units are supposed to represent a quantity n times larger than 1
unit. However, the Richter scale is logarithmic - an earthquake rated
as n on the Richter scale is 10^(n-1) times more energetic than one
rated 1. These aren't units we're dealing with. (Though that doesn't
stop people treating decibels as units.)
--
Ben Hutchings | personal web site: http://womble.decadentplace.org.uk/
Design a system any fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Received on Mon May 26 15:16:25 2003