Fixing a Fault in Quake Reporting

There's a major scientific error in a side article on the Fox News page about the Haiti earthquake.

In one section of the article ("Earthquake Science: The Haitian Quake Explained"), the following statement is given about earthquake magnitudes: "Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake would release 10 times as much energy as a 6.0-magnitude temblor."

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Somebody -- geologist or (more likely) reporter -- is asleep at the switch. The increase in energy released from a 6.0 to a 7.0 (or any single whole number on the magnitude scale) is about THIRTY-TWO (32), not 10.

You see this mistake made a lot in news reporting after a big quake like the one in Haiti. The AMPLITUDE of the measured waveforms is what increases by a factor of 10 with each magnitude step. But the energy release -- and therefore the destructive capacity -- is much greater.