THE MOMENT MAGNITUDE SCALE

what a single step hides: ×10 in recorded amplitude and roughly ×32 in released energy — drawn to true scale

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: science · everyone · comparison · study

The scale steps (×10 amplitude, ≈×32 energy per whole step) and the formula Mw = 2/3 (log M0 − 9.1) follow USGS, “Earthquake Magnitude, Energy Release, and Shaking Intensity”; the largest earthquakes follow USGS “10 Largest Earthquakes Ever Recorded” (2025 update). All ratios on the sheet are computed from the step of 10 to the power 1.5. Checked 2026-08-13.

A STEP OF 0.2 ALREADY DOUBLES IT

A step of 0.2 magnitude already doubles the energy: ten to the power of 1.5 × 0.2 is 1.995 — two within half a percent. An 8.8 next to a 9.0 sounds almost the same, yet releases half the energy.

That is why “slightly stronger” does not exist on this scale: from 7.0 to 9.0 is not “two more” but a thousand times more energy.

On the sheet

The scale steps (×10 amplitude, ≈×32 energy per whole step) and the formula Mw = 2/3 (log M0 − 9.1) follow USGS, “Earthquake Magnitude, Energy Release, and Shaking Intensity”; the largest earthquakes follow USGS “10 Largest Earthquakes Ever Recorded” (2025 update). All ratios on the sheet are computed from the step of 10 to the power 1.5. Checked 2026-08-13.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 8 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

THE MOMENT MAGNITUDE SCALE

A STEP OF 0.2 ALREADY DOUBLES IT

On the sheet

Printing

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