26 April 17

The tumbling characters on my Looney-Tunes®-quake tie are celebrating the birthday (in 1900) of seismologist Charles F. Richter, who developed the Richter Scale of earthquake intensity. Each unit on the Richter Scale represents ten times more seismic activity. This is the same kind of "logarithmic" scale commonly used for sound loudness, light intensity, and pH of solutions. Charles Richter is often credited with the quotation "logarithmic plots are a device of the devil." Many students of science and mathematics agree with Richter about that!