Magnitude Scales
The first attempt to qualitatively define a single, absolute value to describe the size of earthquakes was the magnitude scale (the name being inspired by scales used to represent the brightness of stars).
Read more about this topic: Seismic Scales
Famous quotes containing the words magnitude and/or scales:
“My time has come.
There are twenty people in my belly,
there is a magnitude of wings,
there are forty eyes shooting like arrows,
and they will all be born.
All be born in the yellow wind.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)