Letter: Letters: We want richters

From JIM THOMAS

Why has the scientific community for so long avoided defining a unit
by which earthquakes can be measured? Ninety-nine per cent of earthquakes
are reported in the press as, for example, an earthquake measuring 5.7 on
the Richter scale. Sometimes they say ‘on the open-ended Richter scale’.

Now if it’s good enough for most earthquakes to be reported with reference
to the Richter scale, why can we not have a unit – for example, the richter
– in a similar way to the logarithmic bel and decibel units. We don’t have
to report current as 5.7 on the Ampere scale or as 5.7 on the Volt scale.

I know little about who Richter is or was but he must have made a significant
contribution to the measurement of earthquakes and it would seem reasonable
to recognise that work by defining a unit of earthquake intensity called
the ‘richter’.

We would eventually save a lot of paper and type around the world if
we only had to report an earthquake of 5.7 ‘richters’.

Jim Thomas Victoria, Australia