Charles Francis Richter

All Charles Francis Richter Quotes

• According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected.… According
• Don't wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations. Circumstance
• I have a sense of humor; but over the years that sense has developed one blind spot. I can no longer laugh at ignorance or… Blind
• Magnitude may be compared to the power output in kilowatts of a [radio] broadcasting station; local intensity, on the Mercalli or similar scale, is then… Along
• Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time. Inevitable
• Most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry. ... There… According
• The usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the… All
• [In plotting earthquake measurements] the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large. Dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot… Amplitudes
• Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field. Active
• If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity. Concept
• In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try… Area
• As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact,… Acceleration
• Only fools, liars, and charlatans predict earthquakes Charlatans
• If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be… Affects
• I would walk - not run - to the nearest seismograph. Earthquakes
• The most remarkable feature about the magnitude scale was that it worked at all and that it could be extended on a worldwide basis. It… Actually Turned
• Lately there have been complaints that the use of the magnitude scale is confusing, or at least the reporting of magnitudes in the newspapers 'confuses… Been
• The laboratory routine, which involves a great deal of measurement, filing, and tabulation, is either my lifeline or my chief handicap, I hardly know which. Chief
• I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil. Device
• Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil. Device
• What emerged, of course, was that the magnitude scale presupposed that all earthquakes were alike except for a constant scaling factor. And this proved to… Alike
• By moving them vertically, a representative mean curve could be formed, and individual events were then characterized by individual logarithmic differences from the standard curve. Characterized
• Emphasis was usually put on the horizontal acceleration factor, for the simple reason that ordinary structures have a built-in safety factor for the vertical component;… Acceleration
• For example, some stars put out large amounts of energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, so that this can produce a different relative… Amount
• From here, it becomes an engineering problem; the engineer considers the ground motion that will occur and evaluates the requirements of the proposed structure in… Becomes

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