January 29, 2025
Episode 26
Charles Richter
Measuring Earthquakes
From tiny tremors to catastrophic disasters, earthquakes are a difficult phenomenon to measure. Aarati tells the story of Charles Richter, a man who wanted to study the stars, but ended up studying the literal earth instead.
Listen
Episode Transcript
Arpita: 0:10 Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast, where we talk about the lives of scientists and innovators who shaped the world. How are you, Aarati? Aarati: 0:19 Um, I'm hanging in there. How are you? Arpita: 0:23 I'm also hanging in there. Aarati: 0:26 I think I'm doing better than you. Arpita: 0:29 I'm a little sniffly and under the weather. I am not full sick, but I am just a little sniffly and brain foggy, which is such an annoying in between because I'm trying to work and all I want to do is lay down, but when I'm laying down, I'm not so sick that I'm just like falling asleep. Aarati: 0:51 Yeah, so you feel like I'm wasting time. Arpita: 0:53 I feel like I'm wasting my time. Aarati: 0:55 Yeah. Arpita: 0:56 Yes. Aarati: 0:56 You have enough energy to feel like I should be doing something productive, but then when you try to do something productive, you're like, I can't. Arpita: 1:03 I feel well enough to be fully trapped in the guilt spiral. So that's... Aarati: 1:08 Great. Arpita: 1:08 That's where I'm at. Aarati: 1:09 Yeah. Oh, that's horrible. Oh my God. That sucks. That sucks so bad. I hope you get over it soon. Arpita: 1:16 Thank you. Me too. Aarati: 1:18 Yeah. Arpita: 1:19 What's going on with you? Aarati: 1:20 Well, we are in full on remodel mode again, like Arpita: 1:25 Again? Aarati: 1:25 I was, yes, um, it is the kitchen this time. I think I mentioned last time that the kitchen was the first thing that we had kind of spruced up when we first moved into this house and then slowly was like, Okay. Let's do this bedroom. Okay, let's do the other bedroom. Let's do the living room. Let's do the bathroom. Let's do the other bathroom. And now it's like we've run out of rooms. And so we've come back full circle to the kitchen, which it's now been like 15 years. So things were starting to fall apart. And so we're just like, Let's do the kitchen again. So I'm back to just choosing paint colors, choosing wood stains, choosing tile. It's just like, oh my god, it's a lot. Arpita: 2:11 This is, yeah, like I do enjoy design, but what you're talking about sounds like my nightmare. And honestly, it might be because of my current mental state where adding something else to my to do list right now makes me feel like I want to go jump off a cliff. Aarati: 2:24 Yes, I was actually getting quite annoyed. I was like between like giving Kyro a walk and then going to all of these tile stores and everything, where's my actual job going? Like where did I, where do I have time to actually work and do stuff? Arpita: 2:40 So relatable. Aarati: 2:42 It's crazy. But yeah, it got me thinking like some of the stuff in the kitchen.... is... It is honestly like we it was there when we moved into the house, and I don't even know how long the previous owners had it in so some of it's probably like original to the house, like from 60 years ago so it was like particle board and definitely falling apart, and you know the kitchen so stuff gets wet and moldy and so it was. Um, it, it was, it was needed, you know, but it just got me thinking about when we first moved here to California, my whole family, we moved here from Pennsylvania. I don't know if you knew I was born in Pennsylvania. Arpita: 3:22 I don't think I knew that. Aarati: 3:23 Yeah, I was born in this tiny little town in Pennsylvania and I was like one of two brown people there. And... Arpita: 3:32 I hear that. Yeah. Aarati: 3:33 Yeah. It was like the tiniest little town. And then my dad got a job in California. He's like, we're all moving to California. And my mom really didn't want to go because the only thing she heard about California was that we have earthquakes. And she was like, I'm scared. I don't want to go. And now, she refuses to move anywhere else. She's like, nope, like the world can end. I'm staying in the Bay Area. I'm staying in California. So Arpita: 3:59 I do firmly believe it is the best state. I mean, West Coast, best coast. For sure, for sure. Aarati: 4:04 Love it here. Arpita: 4:05 There's so many things to do here and it's all the different landscapes. Also, it doesn't snow, which I will, sorry, it doesn't snow in the Bay Area, which I will take. Any day. Aarati: 4:16 Yes. Arpita: 4:16 The fact that I can drive my car without shoveling anything is, you know, chef's kiss. I will not take that for granted. Aarati: 4:25 Yeah, absolutely. But that's kind of like what inspired today's story because I was thinking about that. Like we... everyone knows California has earthquakes and it's like, do we really though? Like, you know, we have one tiny little tremor every now and then. We, Arpita: 4:42 We did have one a couple weeks ago. Did you feel that one? Aarati: 4:45 I didn't! See. And that's what I'm talking about. People tell me and I'm like, Oh, did we? I was probably like running around like a nut, you know? Arpita: 4:53 Honestly, Aarati, you were probably sleeping. It was like around 5:30 or 6. Aarati: 4:58 Yeah. I was probably sleeping. Arpita: 4:59 I was like, you're probably sleeping. Aarati: 5:01 No, that's like exactly when I'm dead asleep. Yeah, that's like, I'm dead asleep at 530. No one had better be waking me up then. Yeah. Arpita: 5:10 And then I, I looked at the thing where you like Google it, like, did anyone else feel an earthquake or was that in my dream? And then. I went on TikTok, this was prior to the TikTok degeneration, um, and everyone on there was like, so is everyone on the West Coast just awake right now post earthquake? I was like, okay, good, it's not just me. Aarati: 5:29 It's not just you, but there were some of us who missed it completely. And that is usually like, honestly, when earthquakes happen, as long as I've been in California, I've always heard about it later. Or there was, there was one time when I was like a teenager that I was lying down on the couch. And I was looking up at this hanging lamp that we have, and I noticed that the lamp was swaying. And I was like, that's odd. And then I was like, oh my god, is this an earthquake? Is this, is this an earthquake? And I got super excited. Which is probably not the response that you want to have. Arpita: 6:02 When they're that little, I feel like they are like, kind of fun. I don't know, like if the ground just shakes a little bit, it's like a ride. But I mean, obviously we don't want them to get. Super big, but also like, I don't know, I can see like the buildings in California are, I live in a really old building and they're generally just like built to withstand earthquakes for the most part, unless they're, you know, unless they're crazy, crazy big. So. Aarati: 6:27 Yes. Well, we are going to talk about that today because... Arpita: 6:31 I worry about this. So it feels timely. Aarati: 6:34 Yes, because today we are going to be talking about Charles Francis Richter, who we all know from the Richter scale. So yeah, that's what inspired today's story. So let's jump into it. Arpita: 6:49 Sounds great. Aarati: 6:50 Charles was born on April 26th, 1900 in a farm in Overpeck, Ohio. And the farm where he was born belonged to his mother Lillian's family. And so a little bit about Lillian. In 1891, Lillian had married Frederick Kinsinger, and they had a daughter together named Margaret Rose Kinsinger. But the marriage didn't really last, it was pretty rocky, and shortly after Margaret was born, Lillian and Frederick divorced. But then, eight years later, I guess they decided to try again, and they got remarried, and this time they had Charles, who was also given the last name of Kinsinger. Arpita: 7:32 Okay, weird, but Aarati: 7:33 Yeah, so he was originally Charles Kinsinger, but again, the marriage just didn't last. They hadn't sorted through their issues, I guess. They divorced again for the second time. Arpita: 7:43 Wait, wait, they got divorced, then they got remarried, and then they got divorced again? Aarati: 7:47 Correct. Yeah. Arpita: 7:48 Okay. Aarati: 7:49 And like all within like... Arpita: 7:50 it's giving Ross and Rachel. Aarati: 7:52 Kind of, yeah, but they stayed together long enough to have two children, and then that's it. Then they called it quits for good. Arpita: 7:59 It sounds like almost like the paperwork would have been hard. Aarati: 8:02 Oh my god, and I don't know, well 1900, maybe it's just like sign, sign something and you're done. Arpita: 8:09 That's actually true. I, like, my brain is like, how did they file taxes? But I guess maybe it wasn't as big of a issue. Aarati: 8:15 Yeah, today it would be just, like, insane. It'd be like, is it worth doing this again? Probably not. So Charles and his older sister Margaret both ended up staying with their mother and her father. So they changed their last name to their mother's maiden name, which is Richter. And then Frederick, the father in this case, basically left the picture. So Charles had very few memories of his father, and most of them were not good ones because they're probably fighting all the time. So he was raised by his mother, older sister, and grandfather, and his mother homeschooled him early on and taught him three languages, German, French, and English. I think the family in general, had roots in Germany. So... Arpita: 8:56 Okay. Aarati: 8:57 Yeah. And then his grandfather had a bunch of old science and nature books that Charles liked to read and he was particularly fascinated by astronomy and he would stay up late gazing at the stars and I was just like envisioning in 1900 or like 19 aughts, a little boy, like gazing at the stars in rural Ohio. It was probably gorgeous. There was probably no... Arpita: 9:23 Oh my gosh. Yeah. Aarati: 9:25 Light pollution or anything, so I could totally see this fascination. Arpita: 9:29 The, the scar, the sty, uh, I can't talk. The stars in the sky. Aarati: 9:35 Mm-hmm Arpita: 9:36 Are. Very, very cool, I will say, when there's no light pollution, like when you're camping or when you're out in the wilderness, you just, I think, forget how many stars are in the sky. Aarati: 9:47 Yeah. And you feel so small. You look at everything and you're just like, oh my gosh, the universe is so vast. That's crazy. And so early on in his life, he wanted to be an astronomer. Then when he was nine years old, Charles's grandfather had been hearing about opportunities out west in California, so he decided to pack up the family and move to Pasadena, which is just outside of LA. And here Charles attended school for the first time ever, and it did not go well. It was a really big culture shock for him to move from this like quiet rural countryside to a bustling city. And Charles was extremely socially awkward and had a really hard time making friends and was bullied by the other kids. Arpita: 10:33 I like that we're reprising Pasadena, california, two episodes in a row. Aarati: 10:37 Yes, so I was actually... Arpita: 10:38 Also, they were contemporaries, like this is the same time frame. Aarati: 10:43 I was already researching this story when you had told your story, and I was like, oh my gosh, two scientists in Pasadena in the early 1900s, who were fascinated by the stars, like, this is,... Arpita: 10:56 Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of overlap. Aarati: 10:58 It is. So today people think Charles actually probably had Asperger's syndrome, but it was, he was never actually diagnosed with it during his lifetime. because there was very little recognition around Asperger's and like the autism spectrum. But that would make sense as to why it was really hard for him to interact socially. And since he was having such a hard time, his mother decided to try sending him to the University of Southern California Preparatory School for high school. And he actually did really well there. So he kept up with his amateur stargazing. He developed an interest in chemistry and math. He joined the natural history club and he made friends that he went hiking and camping with. And then after high school, Charles entered college at the university of Southern California as a chemistry major. And I'm not really sure why he chose chemistry. Arpita: 11:48 Yeah that's interesting. Aarati: 11:49 Yeah. He, he was good at chemistry in high school. He found out that he was good at it there, but I'm not sure why he decided to pursue that. But then during his first year, At USC his sister Margaret was studying English at Stanford and she told him how wonderful it was there and like how the atmosphere on campus was so great and so Charles was like, Oh, I should probably go to Stanford. That sounds amazing. So he decided to transfer there. And he continued to study as a chemistry major, but although he was good at chemistry on paper, he was terrible at it in the lab. Arpita: 12:27 Oh, so relatable. I totally get that. I think I did not successfully do any of my, like, Gen Chem lab was so finicky. It was just like, I also felt like it was so rushed for time. I don't know if you felt like this in undergrad, but the lab was like, Not small. And the TA was like some grad student, which now in hindsight, I'm like, yeah, I understand why they were disengaged. Uh, Aarati: 12:52 yes. It's like taking care of all these like kids with chemicals. Great. I don't want to. Arpita: 12:57 Exactly. No, totally agree. And in hindsight, I get it. But in that moment, I was just like, what are you doing? Why are you helping us? Aarati: 13:05 Yes. I feel like I was the opposite. I was good at the practical lab stuff. But then when it came to the theory, I was just like... you lost me. I need, I need you to explain that again. No, one more time. No, one more time. I don't, I'm almost there. Arpita: 13:19 I also always feel like I ended up with the most annoying lab partners where I ended up doing all of the work, which is just so classic. Yes. So classic. I can't say I have fond memories from Gen Chem Lab, that was a terrible time for sure. Aarati: 13:34 Yeah. No, I was also the same in group projects, you're always the one doing all the work and then everyone else is just like, oh, she's smart, she's got this, and I'm like, I mean I do, but like, I, I hate it. Arpita: 13:46 I would love to be the person who's like, In the group being like, Oh, you got it. I'm going to sit here, right? That would be a dream come true for Aarati: 13:53 me. That would be amazing. Yeah. Okay. So he's terrible in the lab because for some reason, he got really nervous and tended to be very sloppy when working with chemicals. And that's really not a good formula for success in chemistry. And in fact, he ended up breaking so many beakers that his professor advised him slash begged him to try a different field of study. So, Oh, It's pretty bad. Fortunately, Charles also found he was pretty good at physics, so he switched his major and he was able to graduate from Stanford at the age of 20, but life as a student had been really stressful for him and after he graduated he ended up having a serious emotional breakdown. It was so bad that he actually had to be hospitalized for some time. Arpita: 14:39 Oh dear. Aarati: 14:40 Yeah. Arpita: 14:40 Okay. Aarati: 14:41 Uh, he got a psychiatrist named Dr. Ross Moore, and he suggested that Charles try writing down what he was feeling, and that really seemed to help him express himself. And so he was slowly able to start piecing his life back together. And he started taking some kind of odd, small, menial jobs, first as a messenger boy at the L. A. County Museum, And then he spent a few years working in a warehouse for the California hardware company in LA. So it was like really random. Like nothing to do with physics at all, but he was still interested in physics. So he kind of like kept a finger on the pulse of like what was going on in physics, especially at what was going on in Caltech because he was like right there in Pasadena. Arpita: 15:27 Right. And so he was like, kind of aware of what was going on. Aarati: 15:31 Heard all the explosions. Just kidding, I'm sorry. Arpita: 15:33 Yeah, probably. Like, what are they doing at that JPL? Aarati: 15:40 Blowing a lot of things up. Arpita: 15:42 Yeah, people are pissed. So he probably knew about that. In 1923, the director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at Caltech, Dr. Robert Andrew Millikan, won the Nobel Prize in physics for finding the measurement of the electric charge carried by a single proton, which was a very important constant in physics and for his work on the photoelectric effect. So Charles heard that Dr. Millikan was giving lectures, and he's like, I've gotta go listen to that and hear what he has to say. So he went and listened and he just got sucked right back into the world of physics. He just got fascinated by it and he's like, I need to keep doing that. So he gave up his job at the warehouse and enrolled in Caltech as a PhD student in physics. He seemed like he was really brave, like he was, you know, trying something different. Aarati: 16:34 Yeah. Arpita: 16:34 It can't be easy after something like that and being hospitalized. And then at least he, like, went back. Aarati: 16:40 Probably really smart too. Yeah. Arpita: 16:41 Totally. Totally. Aarati: 16:42 Yeah. Good for him. So he started work as a student under Dr. Paul Epstein, who studied atomic and theoretical physics and Epstein had been recruited to Caltech by Dr. Millikan and Dr. Millikan was actually also the one who provided the inspiration for Charles's thesis, which was on the hydrogen atom and the hypothesis that the electron had a spin. So I think this was kind of a new theory at the time that electrons could have a spin as a property, and Charles was realizing along with other physicists that if electrons had a spin that would help answer some mathematical anomalies that they were struggling with at the time. So that was kind of what he was studying for his PhD, and he was able to listen to lectures by some really big names in the field of atomic theory, like Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrodinger, all of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize, eventually. Arpita: 17:46 I feel like I forget time periods that all of these scientists lived in. If that makes sense, like when you say all these names in my head they seem so disparate but they were all contemporaries which just seems kind of funny and then the fact that they all like met each other which obviously they would you know like it makes perfect sense like you think about all of the you know high profile scientists now like In their field, they probably all know each other. Like... Aarati: 18:10 Yeah, they're all talking and corresponding. Arpita: 18:13 But in my brain, they each live in separate chapters in a chemistry textbook. And I'm like, none of you guys know each other. Aarati: 18:19 Yeah, they're all living in their own little bubble. Arpita: 18:21 Yes, exactly. It is weird. Aarati: 18:24 Yeah. When I was reading this, I was like, Oh my God, he knew Schrodinger? Like. Wait, what? Arpita: 18:28 That doesn't feel... also, wasn't he German? Aarati: 18:31 Uh, Schrodinger? Yeah, but I think that's also partly why he, like, understood Schrodinger a lot better than a lot of his classmates because he knew German because his mom taught him German. And so, like, when Schrodinger's papers and notes and stuff was all in German and he was, like, listening to this guy who had an accent, he was like, Oh, got it, got it, got it. Like, and he's like, I could talk to you in German. Arpita: 18:53 Got it. Aarati: 18:54 Okay, so Back to Charles. While he was a grad student, he also met his future wife, Lillian Brand. Charles describes her as, quote, a little wild when they first met. So, so background on Lillian. She spent some time studying at UCLA, but then she transferred to Berkeley where she got her degree in English. And then she had gotten married to a man named Reginald Saunders and had a son, Butch, but then they got divorced. So she's crazy. Arpita: 19:30 Wait, that was the crazy part? Is that she got divorced? Aarati: 19:32 No, no, no. Arpita: 19:33 And she has a son? Aarati: 19:34 No, no. Arpita: 19:34 Oh, oh, oh. Aarati: 19:35 But I'm just saying, like, that, that probably added to the crazy, but I think, I think Charles was like, Oh, yeah, she's, she's out there a little, like, she's not afraid to live life and make mistakes and get messy and I bet other people were like, wait a minute, you're, you're into some, like, divorced... Arpita: 19:52 I was gonna say, doesn't his parents, like, Aarati: 19:54 yeah, like, yeah, Arpita: 19:56 I don't know that he has a lot of room to talk here. Aarati: 19:58 Yeah, exactly. No, I don't think he held that against her at all. But I think he was like, yeah, she's a little, you know, she's a little wild. She's not like this, you know, good little girl. Arpita: 20:10 Yeah, okay. I don't know if I buy this, but carry on. Aarati: 20:12 Yeah, but, I don't know if this makes you feel better or not. Um, probably not. But it sounds like Charles didn't really, like, fall in love with Lillian. It was much more like, society expects a man of a certain age to get married. Here's a girl who seems to like me, so let's get married. And it wasn't like this whirlwind romance, like, I totally fell for her type of thing. He's just like, okay. Arpita: 20:39 He was just like, was available and conveniently located. Aarati: 20:42 Yes, exactly. And was apparently like, yeah, I like you. And he's like, okay, works for me. So. Yeah. Arpita: 20:51 The bar is low. Aarati: 20:51 Yeah, exactly. But I mean, it worked for them, I guess. So, so a year later, she and Charles got married and they never had kids of their own, but Charles and Butch, which is now his stepson, uh, they got pretty close and they would go on hiking trips and play chess together. So. They had a little family unit. Arpita: 21:10 Also his name is Butch? Just straight up. That's his legal given. Aarati: 21:14 No, so his legal name was also Reginald Saunders, but since he's a junior, it became Butch for some reason. I don't know how that works. Because, yeah, I've only heard of like Butch as in like, in those like Looney Tunes cartoons. No, I've heard of it as a name, like in those Looney Tunes cartoons for a dog. Like that big. Like Bulldog is named Butch. Arpita: 21:41 I guess that that's probably, I don't know, not that much later than what you're talking about. Aarati: 21:47 Yeah. It's, it's a tough name. It's a really tough name. I don't think we have many Butches now. Arpita: 21:53 I don't think so either. Aarati: 21:54 Yeah. So, at this point, he's been a grad student for a good four or five years, and he didn't really have a clear vision for his future, but he wasn't too worried about it, because he was like looking at the students around him and they were all going out and getting good jobs and he felt like his professors liked him well enough that if they saw an opportunity for him they would help him get a position. But he was very much thinking that he would continue in the field of quantum mechanics and academia until it just so happened that a position opened up at the Seismology Department in Caltech for a data analyst. So in the 1920s, there were two scientists, Harry O. Wood and John A. Anderson, and they had figured out how to record the waves that an earthquake makes on a device called a seismograph. And so, Harry O. Wood and another scientist, Hugo Benioff, spearheaded an effort to build a network of seismographs all across the southern part of California and they needed a data analyst to sift through all of the recordings that they were getting. So it wasn't exactly what Charles had been thinking of but he really enjoyed being at Caltech and the position was an opportunity to stay there in Pasadena close to his family and he could easily keep in touch with his lab and what was going on in quantum mechanics and so he was like, yeah, this is going to be like a temporary kind of situation until something more in like atomic theories and quantum mechanic comes along and then I can just like go back, but I can do this temporarily so. With Dr. Millikan's recommendation, he ended up landing the job as a data analyst, and then he just ended up staying at the Seismo lab for the next 43 years. He never left. Arpita: 23:45 I was not expecting you to say that number of years. He just never left. Aarati: 23:50 Yeah, he just never left. He did, like, go through the stages. He, like, became an assistant professor, eventually, and blah, blah, blah. But, like, yeah, he just never left the Seismo Lab. Arpita: 23:59 I believed you before, but I do feel like the ASD is really showing. Aarati: 24:03 Yeah. He really, like, he's like, this is, this is awesome. Okay. Arpita: 24:09 He's like, this is what I'm good at. Aarati: 24:10 I'm all in. All in. Arpita: 24:12 If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's where he's at. Aarati: 24:14 Yeah. Hi, everyone. Aarati here. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If so, and you wish someone would tell your science story, I founded a science communications company called Sykom, that's S Y K O M, that can help. Sykom blends creativity with scientific accuracy to create all types of science communications content, including explainer videos, slide presentations, science writing, and more. We work with academic researchers, tech companies, non profits, or really any scientist to help simplify your science. Check us out at sykommer.com. That's S-Y-K-O-M-M-E R.com. Okay, back to the story. So as a data analyst, Charles was working with a seismologist called Beno Gutenberg, but they soon ran into a problem because it was very difficult to quantify how strong an earthquake was so that it could be compared to other earthquakes. Arpita: 25:16 Mm-hmm Aarati: 25:17 So there were a few scales that had been used at the time. One was the Mercalli-Cancani-Seiberg scale, or MCS scale, and that had been developed by an Italian volcanologist, Giuseppe Mercalli, and then it was tweaked by Adolfo Cancani and August Heinrich Seiberg. And this was a 12 point scale that went from 1, which meant the earthquake was barely perceptible, to 12, which was an extreme catastrophe. But the problem with this scale was that it was super subjective. So, for example, a level 6 earthquake, which was deemed a strong earthquake, was, quote,"felt by all and many are afraid, heavy furniture is moved and plaster falls". And then a level seven, which was considered a very strong earthquake, was"damage is negligible in buildings with good design and considerable in poorly designed structures". So like, Arpita: 26:15 It's like based on someone's assessment of the damage, basically. Aarati: 26:18 Exactly. Like what's negligible damage? How do you quantify people were frightened, like, you know? Arpita: 26:24 Or like a poorly designed building, like what constitutes that? Yeah. Okay. Aarati: 26:29 Yeah. And then the answer of those questions would vary depending on how far away you were from the epicenter of the earthquake too. So that's a problem also. And also this scale was pretty useless if you were trying to quantify an earthquake that was in an uninhabited area because all the parameters were dependent on seeing things like buildings cracking and vehicles rocking and objects falling. So. It was the best they had, and actually, fun fact, people still do use it today to some extent, um, especially when studying historical earthquakes, but it's not, not great. Arpita: 27:05 So I guess it also, it would require someone to be at a certain spot in order to assess it. So like if it happened somewhere remote, to your point, if no one was there. Aarati: 27:16 Yeah. Arpita: 27:17 Then there's no way to record it. Aarati: 27:19 Yeah. Arpita: 27:19 Or to go back retroactively and assign a number. Aarati: 27:23 Yeah. Exactly. Or if like only one person was there, it's like, okay, but how do you know if that was a level five or a level six if there was no buildings around to tell you? Yeah. Arpita: 27:35 Definitely a lot left to be desired. Aarati: 27:37 Yeah. So, in 1931, this scale was translated into English by Harry O. Wood and Frank Neumann, and they made a few tweaks of their own and renamed it the Modified Mercalli Scale of 1931, or MM31. But still, this scale was really only useful if you had effects that you can observe. And another shortcoming of these scales was that they didn't take into account how earthquakes travel differently based on location. So, for example, in 1895, there was a level 8 earthquake on the MM31 scale that hit Charleston. And that earthquake caused property damage across several states, including Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and was even felt up into Canada. Arpita: 28:27 Wow. Oh my gosh. Aarati: 28:29 Huge. And that's because the soil in the Midwestern U. S. is kind of looser and less complex. So the earthquake waves can travel for longer distances through the ground. But if you have more solid rock, like we have here in most of California, like we were talking about kind of at the beginning of the episode, the earthquake's effects don't travel as far. So there was the infamous earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, which was a level 11 on the MM31 scale. And as we know, it like decimated the city and it caused damage to surrounding Bay Area cities, but although it was catastrophic in the Bay Area, it didn't really go beyond that. So, Arpita: 29:12 I see. That makes sense. Aarati: 29:13 Yeah, so it was felt as far up north as Eureka and as far south as Salinas Valley, but there was no damage in those areas. Arpita: 29:20 That's still not that far, yeah. Aarati: 29:21 Yeah, it's not that far, and there was no damage there, so they felt it, but, you know. Arpita: 29:27 Yeah, yeah. Aarati: 29:27 And it definitely didn't go up into Canada, you know, across state lines or anything. So... Arpita: 29:33 The Midwest earthquake is really interesting too, because I don't think of that as having like a really big fault line or anything, you know? Aarati: 29:41 Yeah. I think that's why, I don't know, maybe I think if you're on a fault line, that's when earthquakes happen more frequently, but you're right. Like Midwest earthquakes aren't really considered a thing. So that is surprising. So Charles was struggling with how to quantify something like this, because which is worse, an earthquake that causes moderate damage across a widespread area or an earthquake that like completely decimates just one city, right? And the other issue was that this scale was linear, which scientifically and mathematically was not great, because a level 12 earthquake was not just 12 times stronger than a level one earthquake, it was like hundreds of millions of times stronger. But it's not really practical to have a scale that goes from one to a billion. So like, what do you do with that? Arpita: 30:30 You need some sort of exponential function in order to quantify or at least account for that difference. Aarati: 30:36 Yeah, exactly. So Charles talks to Beno Gutenberg, who has exactly that idea. Beno says, why don't you try a logarithmic scale? And so that got Charles thinking about the stars. Okay, so little bit of a tangent here, but you'll see how it connects. So Charles obviously hadn't become an astronomer like he dreamed when he was a kid, but he never stopped studying the stars, and he is just obsessed with it. So because of this, he knew that we actually measure the brightness of the stars using a logarithmic scale. And that's important because if you imagine you're looking up at the night sky and you see two stars, one of them is really big and bright and one of them is a bit smaller and dimmer. How do you know if the brighter star is actually bigger and brighter or if it's just much closer to the earth than the smaller star? So that small star could actually be like 10 times bigger, but it's a hundred times further away. So. We're only seeing it as a very small dim light. Arpita: 31:40 So your comparison point is potentially different. Aarati: 31:42 Yeah. Exactly. So astronomers realized that they couldn't just measure just how bright the star was based on how we perceive it from Earth. We also need to measure how bright a star actually is. And so they came up with a new measurement called luminosity, which was the magnitude of the light energy that a star releases from its surface. Arpita: 32:05 That makes sense because then you can compare more apples to apples as opposed to relative to two stars in the sky or relative to where you are on earth. Aarati: 32:13 Exactly. And so Charles realized that that's exactly the problem we were having with earthquakes up to this date. We were only measuring the intensity of the earthquake, which was how much damage it caused or how strong it felt based on our perception of it, but we should also be studying the magnitude of it, which is how much energy is actually being released when an earthquake happens. So based on Beno's advice and most of the recent papers in seismology, Charles developed a logarithmic scale based on the amplitude of the waves recorded by a seismograph. So, you know, seismograph reading kind of has those like, like jiggly waves whenever an earthquake hits? Arpita: 32:58 Yeah. Aarati: 32:58 So, his scale is corresponding to that. So it starts at 0 to 1, which is a micro earthquake that's recorded by a seismograph, but is not felt by people. So you'll see this like little tiny wave on the seismograph. And then every time the amplitude of that wave increases tenfold, that corresponds to a whole number increase on the scale. Arpita: 33:22 Okay. That makes sense. So, as the waves progressively bigger from the zero point, like from a flat line, how much displacement there is, as those get bigger based on tenfold, that's why you have the logarithmic scale. Aarati: 33:39 Yes. Arpita: 33:39 That's why, that's when it goes up one point. That makes sense. Aarati: 33:43 Yeah. Arpita: 33:43 So it's like a log ten function. Aarati: 33:44 And it's really looking at the amplitude of the wave. So it's like zero is a straight line and then you get a little tiny wave that's 10 to the one. So that's one. If you get a 10 times bigger wave than that, that's 10 to the two. So that's a magnitude two earthquake. If you get 100 times bigger than that wave, then that's a 10 to the three or No, 10 to the 2, sorry. 10 to the 1, 10 to the 2. I'm getting my scale messed up. Arpita: 34:09 No, you're right. And then you were 10 to the three. You're right. Aarati: 34:12 Yeah. A thousand times stronger would be 10 to the 3. Yeah. Arpita: 34:15 Yep. This is why we can't do math episodes. Aarati: 34:20 I know. Like, we can barely do logs. Arpita: 34:21 That wasn't even hard. Aarati: 34:22 I know, that wasn't even hard. Arpita: 34:23 That wasn't even hard. Aarati: 34:24 I still messed it up. Well, I mean, anything harder than like 13 plus 24 and I'm like, calculator, please. What? Arpita: 34:33 I would have used a calculator for that. Aarati: 34:35 Also, like, we're just like log base 10, which is the simplest log. I know. It's like 10, 100, 1000. This is why I have notes. I should stick to my notes. I should not try to like ad lib. Okay. So that was in terms of like the amplitude wave. The amplitude wave is like log base 10. But in terms of energy, every increase of 0. 2 on the scale is a doubling of the amount of energy released. So a 5. 2 magnitude earthquake releases twice as much energy as a 5. 0 magnitude earthquake. And so then that means a 6. 0 earthquake will be 32 times stronger than a 5. 0 and a 7. 0 will be about 1, 000 times stronger than a magnitude 5. 0. That's, that's the math. That's the math. We're done. Arpita: 35:27 I will not be, I will not be submitting a proof. I believe you. Aarati: 35:30 Yes, I did actually. I multiplied it. I was like 32 times 32 is 1, 024. So about, about 1, 000 times. Yeah. So there's technically no upper limit to how strong an earthquake can get on this scale, but the strongest one ever on record is the Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960, which was a magnitude 9. 5. And scientists have theorized that a magnitude 10 earthquake is probably the upper limit of what is even possible on Earth. Arpita: 36:02 That's so interesting. Even like the ones that happen in the ocean. Does it include those? Aarati: 36:07 Yeah. Arpita: 36:07 Like, even those? Aarati: 36:08 Yeah. Arpita: 36:08 The ones that don't end up having a ton of destruction because they happen in the deep ocean, like, you know, faults? Aarati: 36:14 I think they were saying, like, if, like, I think there's some scientists in Japan who figured this out, and they were like, if the fault line along the Japanese trench in the ocean smashed into this other fault line, and, like, you know, ground against each other, that would probably be like magnitude 10, but it would have to be like, so of a certain area, like this huge area along the fault line and this huge area along the other fault line, like for miles and miles would have to like, literally rupture against each other, and then that would be a magnitude 10. So hopefully that does not happen. Arpita: 36:53 That's so crazy that you could even extrapolate that. Aarati: 36:56 Yeah, I bet there is all sorts of computer modeling and stuff, which would be so cool to see. Arpita: 37:01 It is so crazy that the really crazy earthquakes are usually happening in the ocean because so much of the surface area of the earth is oceans. That the likelihood of a big earthquake happening on land where it's populated is just statistically low. Aarati: 37:18 Yeah. Arpita: 37:19 And so when I think of like the really crazy earthquakes, I usually think of tsunamis. Aarati: 37:22 Yes. Arpita: 37:23 Which is because of that. Aarati: 37:24 Yes. Okay. So Charles used his scale to look at all the seismograph data he had and everything fit perfectly on this logarithmic scale. He said, quote, the scale fell right out of my hands. It was a much more powerful tool than we had any right to look for. So he published the scale in a paper in 1935 called"An Instrumental Earthquake Magnitude Scale". And importantly if you notice he called it the"magnitude scale", not the Richter scale. But by this time he had been studying earthquakes in Southern California for several years and so he became a very well known seismologist. And a couple of years earlier in 1933, the Long Beach earthquake had rocked LA and Charles spoke to several reporters as an expert on the subject. So like people knew about him. And so when he published this paper, reporters were like, what do we call this scale? And it was actually a seismologist in Berkeley, Perry Byerly, who told journalists that they should call it the Richter scale. Arpita: 38:29 Wait, that's actually very sweet that he didn't name it after himself. Aarati: 38:33 No. Arpita: 38:33 He was just like, Oh, this is just an objective scale. Aarati: 38:37 Yeah. This is the magnitude scale. You should call it the magnitude scale. Cause that's what it is. And people were like, no, we're calling it the Richter scale. That sounds cooler. So Charles, because of this becomes sort of an earthquake celebrity, but there were some people who weren't really happy about this. A lot of people, like a lot of his colleagues. who were working in the Seismolab thought that there were other people who had contributed equally or even more that weren't getting credit by calling it the Richter scale. So like Beno Gutenberg, whose idea it had been to try a logarithmic scale in the first place, wasn't getting any credit. Hugo Benioff, who was the one who created the actual seismograph that was generating all this data, wasn't getting any mention, and then Harry O. Wood, who had been kind of leading the charge on this whole project, and had hired Charles in the first place, and like, put all these people together, like, none of them ever reached the same level of popularity, and like, becoming a household name as Charles did. Importantly though, none of them were listed as an author on Charles's paper either. So. Arpita: 39:43 Oh, I was just going to ask is, I mean. Aarati: 39:46 Yeah. Arpita: 39:46 He wasn't advocating for it to be named after him anyway. Yeah. So it's possible that from press like articles that it would be left off. That's so weird that they were left off the paper then to, you know, the more episodes we do, though, I feel like authorship and the culture around authorship is so different now, like, I feel like. Aarati: 40:05 Yeah, it didn't sound like it was like he deliberately left them off the paper or anything. He was just like. This is, I've come up with the scale, here it is, and it wasn't like I should really list all these people that helped me at the time. It wasn't like that. It kind of sounds like because Arpita: 40:22 it does seem like that. I feel like it's very normal to have 20 authors on a really big Nature paper like that's super common. Or having, I would say, like, two authors, if it's not a position paper, is odd. If I see only two authors and it's not like a narrative review or something, is weird. But it does seem like the culture is very different now in academia than it was, because I feel like this authorship thing has come up in a lot of different episodes. Aarati: 40:50 Yeah, it's it is a bit weird. I did go back and look at that specifically. And it's like, no, it's Charles Richter. And he's the sole author on this paper. Arpita: 40:58 Yeah, you would never see that. Aarati: 41:00 Yeah. But then like, also, he never denied like how important his, his like colleagues were. And he even thought that he was inferior as a seismologist compared to them. They were, he was like, they're great. Like, I just kind of got lucky or I, I don't know why I became popular. I just did. But like, if you want the real deal, they're the ones like, and he was always like that. He, he never wanted this level of publicity, I think, or that's not what he was really after. And I think because he got a lot of this publicity is actually a bit hard on him because his personality was like really. Kind of an awkward introverted type of person. He would like ramble on when he talked, especially if you asked him an open ended question. He didn't know when to stop talking. And yeah, I think his colleagues just kind of thought him a bit of a weird person. And to be fair, he kind of earned that weird label because During the years that he's working on earthquakes and creating this magnitude scale, Charles wife, Lillian, had convinced him to join an organization run by Hobart and Lura Glassy called the Fraternity Elysia, which was a nudist organization. And I thought this was a bit random, but it sounds like Charles didn't really have friends at work, but he was able to really build a social circle within the nudist community. Arpita: 42:32 Okay. Wasn't Jack Parsons also in a nudist community though? Like why was this like a thing in Pasadena? Aarati: 42:37 I don't know. I was also thinking about that. Was he, was he a nudist? Was Jack Parsons a nudist? Arpita: 42:42 No, but he was like, involved with some of the nudists. Aarati: 42:46 He was like into the occult. Arpita: 42:48 It's the occult, but I think they did a lot of nudist things. Although when I think of nudist, I think of it being very innocuous, like very innocent. They just love peace and the earth, and they just also love their bodies, sort of. And they think clothes are not quite right. Yeah, I think Jack Parsons was much more sinister. But yes, it does seem. Like, there could be a thread there. Also, like, who isn't weird in the lab? Like, I feel like it is really a requirement in order to be a scientist. Aarati: 43:19 Like, everyone's awkward and weird. Yeah. Arpita: 43:22 A hundred percent. What you're saying just tracks for me. Aarati: 43:26 Yeah, but I think you're right though. I think Charles... like for Charles and Lillian, The nudist community was like a much more wholesome kind of like freeing experience and just like, you know a place where they could shed all expectations which really helped him make a lot more intimate friends than he ever could at work. That's nice. Yeah. However, around 1935, 1936, the Glasseys ran into a bunch of legal troubles because so many of them, so many people in general, especially at the time, viewed nudism as immoral or a sexual perversion. And they labeled the members as exhibitionists when, like we said, really for Charles, it wasn't about that at all. But due to the stigma and multiple legal battles, the community inevitably lost some of the kind of like freedom vibes that had drawn Charles and Lillian to them in the first place. And so, yeah, he continued to be a nudist, but like over the years, he lost that original sense of community that he was craving. So when things like this happened or times got tough for Charles, he would turn to writing to express his feelings. And I think partly because that's what had helped him when he had his first emotional breakdown, but also because his sister Margaret had by this time become a brilliant poet. And so Charles would often use poetry to express how he was feeling. And in 1933, he wrote a poem called Earthquake, which I wrote down. Arpita: 45:00 Yes, I do. Let's hear it. Aarati: 45:04 Okay, so here's his poem Earthquake. I set my aspiration on the soundest rock and chose my building stone with care. No moral clay, no pious wooden block, but granite fact and rigid logic layer on layer. I built high towers not of ivory but stone, wide rooms for books and serious things. There was a house room for solid work alone, but on the top rose my best imaginings. Finished at last, I felt an architectural pride. No mind had such a house before. Then just as I was about to march inside, there came a violent shaking and a stunning roar. In spite of argument, the clashing stones broke free. In vain, the rock stood firm and sound. My towers collapsed in streams of masonry, and all my lofty dreams fell crashing to the ground. Though not beyond repair, the splendid house was wrecked. I cursed and left it unrestored. Puzzled, not comprehending my defect, I came with my perplexities before the Lord. Whose smiling said, You are no mason, it appears. Return and make a new assault. Use better mortar and dismiss your fears. The rock and stone were good, the builder was at fault. So, yeah. Arpita: 46:18 Wait, that's so good. That was way better than I thought it was gonna be. I don't know what I was expecting from that little nerdy boy, but that's such a good poem. Aarati: 46:28 Really good. Arpita: 46:29 I like the line. It's really good. I really like the line about the, the towers were not ivory, but stone. Aarati: 46:36 Yeah. Arpita: 46:36 I really like that. And then I like that it's just like, about his, his whole personal growth journey. Like the towers fell, but then he realized that he could rebuild and just be stronger. Like, I love that. That's so sweet. Aarati: 46:50 It was very deep. Yeah. Arpita: 46:52 Very deep. Damn, look at him go. Aarati: 46:55 I know. I read a bunch of his poems, actually, and I was like, these are all so good. Like, and they're all like very, like, you could tell they're very personal to him. Like he's talking about what it's like to be an introvert or what it's like to like, you know, deal with like certain adversities that rose up in his life. And he ran the gamut. He would write like romance poetry, he would write like these big, long, sweeping epics. So, Arpita: 47:24 That's so impressive. I love that. Aarati: 47:27 And he also wrote novels on science fiction and philosophy. He was just like constantly writing papers and letters to his friends and colleagues. And people didn't really seem to know that about him. Like even his colleagues didn't know that. He wrote so much until after he died and they started going through all his things and they just found like loads of journals and letters and novels and poetry and they're just like, what is all of this? Arpita: 47:56 I mean, I feel like novels is on a different level though. Like to be able to craft a story of that length and depth feels like it's a different, a different ask. Aarati: 48:06 Yes, definitely. But he is just like a prolific, prolific writer. But he barely opened up about his private life at work, and in fact, many of his colleagues were also completely unaware that Charles had a stepson at all. They didn't even know about Butch. So some of them, they like, only found out in 1957 when Butch tragically took his own life and it was a huge blow to Charlie, who had been very close to him and it caused him once again to spiral into this like deep depression. So at this point, I think Charles is really battling a lot of mental health issues. Butch passed away suddenly and tragically. And then three years later, Beno Gutenberg passed away, who was his colleague who gave him the idea about using a logarithmic scale. And at this point, like not only did Charles feel like he had lost a really good and important colleague, but it also renewed the drama of Beno not having gotten credit for helping create the scale and all the numerous contributions that he had made to the field of seismology. Arpita: 49:21 It also feels like he's already kind of sensitive, like he's already kind of a sweet, soft, sensitive boy. Aarati: 49:27 He is. Arpita: 49:27 And I feel like this brings up all these really complicated feelings of whether or not he did the right thing or whether or not, you know, he did right by a colleague who was really important to him, so this makes a lot of sense. It was really sad. Aarati: 49:41 Yeah. One thing that I thought was interesting, one of my sources was a book called Charles Richter, Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man by Susan Elizabeth Hough. And she notes that part of the reason Charles became famous was because he was a good science communicator and he was able to talk to the public in a way that they could like relate to and understand and he never like looked down on journalists. Or like people who didn't know about earthquakes. He never talked down to them. He respected them and he did a lot of campaigning for earthquake preparedness and safety, especially in LA, and he helped like make buildings safer by updating building codes and getting involved in developing better engineering practices. And so then every time there was a major earthquake, he would be back in the public spotlight because everyone wanted to talk to him, you know? Arpita: 50:33 Because he was willing to talk to them and exactly meet them where they were. Yeah. Aarati: 50:37 Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, that is so I think that's part of science communication. That's often overlooked is that, yeah, like you said, it needs to go both ways. Like we need an audience that's willing to listen, but we also need to be willing to talk in a way that, you know, everyone can understand and we need to meet each other in the middle, kind of. Arpita: 50:58 Exactly. Aarati: 51:00 So unfortunately the popularity he had with the public, as I said, didn't really seem to extend into academia and it kind of just got worse as years went on. So younger students came to Caltech and they were like super excited to meet THE Charles Richter who made the Richter scale and they wanted to talk about what they thought was the next great challenge in seismology, which was accurately predicting when and where an earthquake would hit, but Charles like just didn't believe it was possible. And to be fair, we still don't have a good way today of predicting earthquakes. But you can probably imagine like him just kind of awkwardly shutting students down who are like so passionate about like, I want to talk about this and I have all these ideas and he's just like, no, it's not possible. And they were like,"Well, you're a jerk," you know? And Arpita: 51:50 This is like so cringe because I feel like, again, this like happens all the time, like, especially at, you know, large universities, there's extremely famous professors and everybody thinks that they have the next greatest thing and that's just not true. Aarati: 52:03 Yeah, exactly. But he like just also just didn't know how to let them down gently, which, you know. He didn't really end up making many friends that way either. So because of that, because he was like, and I think because he was kind of unwilling to try their ideas and stuff like that, people started to see Charles as kind of a has been. Like, he did his one famous thing and now he's not really contributing anything useful. So by the 1960s, the scientists at Caltech were urging him to retire and he resisted this for many years. He really saw the seismolab as kind of his home and a place where he was very comfortable, and he didn't want to let that go. But in 1970, he finally caved and retired. But he continued to stay active in the seismology field, and was still regularly interviewed whenever a major earthquake happened. And he still visited the seismolab all the time, just to say like, hi, what's up, you know, so. By the early 1980s, Charles had begun to struggle with declining health, so he started to withdraw from the public. In 1984, he had a heart seizure that he never fully recovered from, and one year later, he died on September 30th, 1985 of congestive heart failure. He was cremated and buried next to his wife's grave at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena. However, weirdly, no one bothered to update the gravestone, and so for years he just kind of laid buried anonymously next to his wife. So Arpita: 53:40 Wait, what? Aarati: 53:40 Yeah, so his wife had a gravestone. Arpita: 53:43 Well I guess he didn't have any kids and Butch had already passed, so I guess, I mean, like, who would have done it? But that's super sad. Aarati: 53:49 It's so, yeah, and also, I mean, he's Charles Richter, like, you would've thought someone would've, like, been like, he needs a proper grave. Yeah, somebody. Like, for all the popularity he had. But it wasn't until 1996, more than 10 years later, that a private donor and some of Charles's old colleagues raised the funds to get a new headstone. Arpita: 54:12 How expensive is a headstone? Aarati: 54:14 I know, right? I was thinking that, too. I was like, it can't be more than a few hundred bucks. I don't know. Okay, so to wrap up, technically, we don't use the Richter scale today to measure earthquakes. So in 1979, two seismologists, Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanemore developed a better logarithmic scale called the moment magnitude scale that addressed some of the shortcomings of the Richter scale. So Richter scale became less accurate when scientists tried to calculate the total energy of earthquakes. Earthquakes that were 6. 5 and higher and the scale was also dependent on the earthquake being local and having a reading from a seismograph. Arpita: 54:59 Yeah Aarati: 54:59 So it has its shortcomings. And so we have a better scale, but I think because of Charles's popularity in the public eye, the moment magnitude scale is often just also referred to as the Richter scale by journalists and whatnot. So we still call it that even though it's not that. Arpita: 55:18 That is really funny, given that there was all these issues around everyone calling it the Richter scale and now it's not even the Richter scale but we're still calling it that. Aarati: 55:26 We're still calling it the Richter scale. Yeah. Arpita: 55:29 That's funny. Aarati: 55:30 But, like, have you ever heard of the moment magnitude scale? It's just not catchy. Arpita: 55:35 No, no. I think it's because no one is naming things well. Aarati: 55:39 Yeah. Arpita: 55:39 That's, I think, the problem here. Aarati: 55:40 Exactly. Arpita: 55:42 They should have named it something zingier, and then it will stack. Aarati: 55:45 Yeah, you need to come up with a better name. Then you can get thrust into popularity and have emotional breakdowns. No, just kidding. Arpita: 55:51 That's so dark, Aarati. Aarati: 55:53 I know. I'm just imagining what would happen to me one day if I got famous. Arpita: 56:02 Definitely an emotional breakdown in my future. Aarati: 56:04 Yeah. And April 26th, which is Charles birthday, is unofficially Richter's Scale Day. And to commemorate this day, some people bake earthquake cookies. Which are, like, basically chocolate crinkle cookies, you know, with the powdered sugar, but then it has, like, all the cracks. Yeah, I didn't know. I love chocolate crinkle cookies. I didn't know that they were called earthquake cookies, so. Arpita: 56:27 That's actually really cute. Aarati: 56:29 Yeah, and the other thing that they'll do is they will wear a shoestring around their neck in remembrance of a funny story in which Charles secretary once had to remind him that he was supposed to attend a meeting, and he should probably wear a tie to this meeting. But he instead undid one of his shoelaces and tied it around his neck and was like, good enough. Arpita: 56:51 I have a very vague memory of doing this in elementary school. Aarati: 56:55 Really? Arpita: 56:56 I think so. Definitely the crinkle cookies. And what you said about the shoelace I feel like sparked something deep in my hippocampus, but I Aarati: 57:05 Oh my goodness. Arpita: 57:06 I cannot confirm nor deny, but that sounds so vaguely familiar and something like, it sounds like something an elementary school class would do for sure. Aarati: 57:14 It absolutely does. Yeah, it absolutely does. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So that's basically his story. A funny, kind of awkward dude, you know, um, who kind of became famous by accident. Arpita: 57:29 Great story. I loved it. I also feel like there's just so much About earthquakes as a Californian, you talk about'em all the time. You feel them all the time. And then also way back to elementary school thing, like we had a whole unit on faults and earthquakes in fourth or fifth grade. I don't know if you had that too, but yeah, it just feels like such a core part of Californian culture. Like I never knew all that about him. Aarati: 57:55 Like fourth or fifth grade you learn like state history, right? And so yeah, earthquakes is like a huge part of that for us. Yeah. Arpita: 58:03 Yeah, that's true. That's true. Aarati: 58:04 Yeah, Arpita: 58:05 I love that. Great story. Aarati: 58:07 I had to focus a lot on this because I kept on like veering off into like, ooh, let me learn about fault lines. And I'm like, no, no, we got to Richter like what he did. And he's an interesting enough guy. So I was like, you need to need to keep this tight and need to like, not veer off into. You know, like you said, ocean trenches. Arpita: 58:27 Okay, but ocean trenches are crazy. Aarati: 58:29 I know. Arpita: 58:30 Maybe that's our next scientist is some ocean trend. Aarati: 58:32 Some ocean guy. We haven't done an ocean person. Arpita: 58:34 We haven't done an ocean person. You're right. You're right. We have any like marine. Okay, but ocean trenches. That's what I want to know. Aarati: 58:40 Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that's coming up in the future. Arpita: 58:49 Thanks for listening. If you have a suggestion for a story we should cover or thoughts you want to share about an episode, reach out to us at smartteapodcast. com. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky at smartteapodcast, and listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or comment, it really helps us grow. Special thanks to our editor, James Fix. New episodes are released every other Wednesday. See you next time!
Sources for this Episode
1. Roos, Dave. The Richter Scale's California Origins. History. Published October 2, 2024. Accessed January 21, 2025.
​2. A Brief Biography of Charles F. Richter. Richter Earthquake Site. Accessed January 20, 2025.
​3. Charles Richter. Interviewed by Ann Scheid. February 15- September 1, 1978. Archives California Institute of Technology. Accessed January 21, 2025.
​4. Hough, S. E. (2007). Richter’s Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man. Princeton University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1f5g4rv
5. Ratterman, Bob. Richter Scale's developer was a scientist with Butler County Roots. Journal News. Published April 2, 2022. Accessed January 21, 2025.
​​​​