Bye bye Richter :-(

[Simpo Two]

And so the tried and tested Richter Scale has suddenly been replaced by the 'Moment' Scale.

The units appear to be the same, or very close. So why has Mr Richter been cancelled?

[greygoose]

The earth shattering reason is the moment scale is more accurate for larger quakes than the Richter scale.

[Eric Mc]

The Richter Scale was retired many years ago.

[ChevronB19]

Simpo Two said:

And so the tried and tested Richter Scale has suddenly been replaced by the 'Moment' Scale.

The units appear to be the same, or very close. So why has Mr Richter been cancelled?

This really isn’t news. It has t been used in decades, certainly since I trained as a geologist in the late 80’s.

Richter might have been ‘tried and tested’, but was complete b*llocks to use on a world wide scale.

[Simpo Two]

It was the first time I'd heard of the 'Moment' scale - but the numbers seem to about the same, like centigrade and celsius, BC and BCE etc. How is the new kid in town better?

[Soloman Dodd]

Can I still use my Salter scale?

[Eric Mc]

Simpo Two said:

It was the first time I'd heard of the 'Moment' scale - but the numbers seem to about the same, like centigrade and celsius, BC and BCE etc. How is the new kid in town better?

It's not a new kid in town. It's been around for most of my life (and I'm in my 60s).

Hopefully, somebody with good knowledge on such matters will let us know why the Richyer Scale was superseded all thosde years ago. A quick look at the Wiki page indicates that the Richter Scale was too localised and did not give a true measure of the real strength of the earthquake.

[ChevronB19]

Eric Mc said:

Simpo Two said:

It was the first time I'd heard of the 'Moment' scale - but the numbers seem to about the same, like centigrade and celsius, BC and BCE etc. How is the new kid in town better?

It's not a new kid in town. It's been around for most of my life (and I'm in my 60s).

Hopefully, somebody with good knowledge on such matters will let us know why the Richyer Scale was superseded all thosde years ago. A quick look at the Wiki page indicates that the Richter Scale was too localised and did not give a true measure of the real strength of the earthquake.

In essence, this link below gives a reasonable explanation, so I won’t bother essentially repeating it. But in essence it was locally based, incorrectly calibrated (or correctly calibrated for its intended use) and only took into account one type of earthquake wave. Don’t forget the modified Mercalli scale, which measures intensity rather than magnitude IIRC.

https://www.livescience.com/29005-why-richter-scal...

[Simpo Two]

Thanks; I was thinking of degree of up and down-ness' but there's more to it than that.

[eharding]

Simpo Two said:

...like centigrade and celsius, BC and BCE etc. How is the new kid in town better?

Apparently 'centigrade' could be confused (mainly by the French) with 1/100th of a gradian, which in turn is an angle of 0.9 degrees, so to keep the frogs happy the unit was renamed in honour of a Swedish astronomer. BCE because BC is problematic if you don't think Jesus Christ was a) born when he supposed to have been b) actually born at all, ever or c) just not popular in your neck of the woods anyway. A couple more you could add to your collection are millibars and hectopascals - I remember in November 2011 when we had to stop referring to 'millibars' for altimeter settings and use 'hectopascals' instead (although I remember one Waltham A/G operator and sometime bizjet jockey for the likes of Nicolai Smolenski who, if he knew who was calling on the radio, would give the pressures both in 'milkybars' and "silly old hectorpascals" - you needed to be of a certain age to appreciate the latter)

[Simpo Two]

- which I do...!

I don't mind units changing for better ones, it's the PC ones that annoy me. Or if the letters 'PC' offend anyone, just call it 'PCE'

What's the PCE version of AD? ADH maybe...

[Dingu]

Simpo Two said:

- which I do...!

I don't mind units changing for better ones, it's the PC ones that annoy me. Or if the letters 'PC' offend anyone, just call it 'PCE'

What's the PCE version of AD? ADH maybe...

The correct reasons annoy you when you can’t be bothered to use Google for 10 seconds.

[Simpo Two]

I spend a lot of time googling things. But sometimes it's more fun to start a conversation - especially as results then get a filter that only PH provides.

[Beati Dogu]

See you at the party Richter...