A few days ago there was an earthquake here. The news declared it "major," which pretty much means they think they can scare someone with it. I never got a definite rating on it, but it was either 5.2 or 5.4. Apparently they couldn't decide. Even if it's 5.2, that sounds pretty bad to me. My only real comparison is the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 during the World Series, which was a 7.1 on the Richter Scale. Let's just say this one wasn't quite as bad as that one. I remember waking up at about 4 or 5 am and feeling a little shaking. Right after it happened, we decided it was an earthquake... and then we promptly went right back to bed.Later on I found out that the Richter Scale is actually logarithmic. Now, it's been a long time since I have taken any trig or calc or whatever logarithms were in, but I do know that the difference between 5.2 and 7.1 is a lot bigger on a log scale than on a normal one. So it turns out 5.2 is no big deal, especially when it's 100 miles away. So just consider it a free math lesson courtesy of the New Madrid fault line.
2 comments:
All I remember from trig and calc is that you blew the curve every.single.time. I spent an entire summer with an early curfew because I got a stupid D on my calc final.
Calc was easy. I spent the summer honing my battle-drawing skills... oh wait, that was Calc class.
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