This is not historically accurate. You can find a pretty good account of the development of the Richter scale on Wikipedia. It was developed to replace a felt-experience-based assessment, such as the Rossi-Forel, which had some nice vivid descriptions.
Felt experience still was used to choose the zero point.
If we think about property damage, many buildings are going to be built to withstand an earthquake up to a certain magnitude. Below this, damage, measured in dollars or in lost lives, may be less than 10x per point on the Richter scale. Above this, damage may suddenly jump by much more. It’s all about the relationship between historical trends in earthquake magnitude and investment in engineering to resist future earthquakes.
In my experience, log scales are convenient for scientists, because we’re less prone to error. If I need a solution to be at pH 1, that’s easy to remember. If I had to convert that to absolute H+ concentration, I’d be prone to dropping a zero somewhere. But if you don’t understand log scales, or are using them as a subjective guide rather than a scientific instrument, I think they’re less helpful—as evidenced by the fact that they don’t get used for, say, measuring wealth or population levels, which are the areas where lay audiences routinely encounter large numbers.
For another interesting history of the move from subjective assessments to more uniform observations, check out the development of the Beaufort Scale!
This is not historically accurate. You can find a pretty good account of the development of the Richter scale on Wikipedia. It was developed to replace a felt-experience-based assessment, such as the Rossi-Forel, which had some nice vivid descriptions.
Felt experience still was used to choose the zero point.
If we think about property damage, many buildings are going to be built to withstand an earthquake up to a certain magnitude. Below this, damage, measured in dollars or in lost lives, may be less than 10x per point on the Richter scale. Above this, damage may suddenly jump by much more. It’s all about the relationship between historical trends in earthquake magnitude and investment in engineering to resist future earthquakes.
In my experience, log scales are convenient for scientists, because we’re less prone to error. If I need a solution to be at pH 1, that’s easy to remember. If I had to convert that to absolute H+ concentration, I’d be prone to dropping a zero somewhere. But if you don’t understand log scales, or are using them as a subjective guide rather than a scientific instrument, I think they’re less helpful—as evidenced by the fact that they don’t get used for, say, measuring wealth or population levels, which are the areas where lay audiences routinely encounter large numbers.
For another interesting history of the move from subjective assessments to more uniform observations, check out the development of the Beaufort Scale!