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 ...
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