[1raider1]

500 times more powerful than the one that shook Haiti last month.

Isn't that like saying that 100 degrees is 100 times hotter than 1 degree?

[ArrogantBustard]

Isn't that like saying that 100 degrees is 100 times hotter than 1 degree?

no.

[SeekAndFind]

Isn't that like saying that 100 degrees is 100 times hotter than 1 degree?

The Richter scale is NOT a linear measurement of a quake's intensity.

The Richter magnitude scale, also known as the local magnitude (ML) scale, assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. It is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the combined horizontal amplitude of the largest displacement from zero on a Wood–Anderson torsion seismometer output. So, for example, an earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0. The effective limit of measurement for local magnitude ML is about 6.8