The Richter scale defines the magnitude of an earthquake to be R=log(IcIn) where Ic is the intensity of the earthquake and In is the intensity of a standard earthquake. Therefore, you can write the difference of two magnitudes as R2−R1=log(I2I1).

What is a 10 on the Richter scale?

To describe the strength of quakes, scientists use a scale of numbers called the Richter scale. The Richter scale grows by powers of 10. ... A quake registering 3.0 is 10 X 10 or 100 times stronger than a quake registering 1.0 A 4.0 is 10 X 10 X 10 or 1,000 times greater than 1.0 and so on.

Does the Richter scale go from 1 to 10?

The Richter scale has no lower limit and no maximum. It's a "logarithmic" scale, which means that each one-point increase on the scale represents a 10-fold increase in the magnitude of the quake.