Performance scale

I can tell Julio is joking here. And not just because I’m the one who drew him, but because an event registering a 9 on the Richter scale would mean an energy of approximately 2 Exajoule (2.000.000.000.000.000 Joule) would have been released. Even fully loaded and with an engine conversion, the Cessna 172 would have a hard time achieving that.

And that, children, is how you spoil a joke by overanalyzing!

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6 comments on “Performance scale
  1. Nigel says:

    in the interests of overanalysing – Mr Richter has been superseded – it’s the moment magnitude scale! 🙂

    • stef says:

      Yes, I noticed that! Of course I knew the thing about the 2 Exajoule by heart (hum hum), but just to make sure, I looked at the Wikipedia page and saw the reference to the moment magnitude scale. I guess it’s been around since the 70s, but as a layman who only concerns himself with earthquakes when they appear on the TV news, all I ever hear about is the Richter scale. It’ll probably stay like that for a while, just like the “horsepower” which still hasn’t really been replaced by kWh.

  2. Gonzalo Avaria says:

    The funny part about this joke is that IT HAPPENED YESTERDAY!!! One of my classmates was flying yesterday and around the time he was landing, a 5.7 earthquake happened in the city… we all joked about him “porpoising” and producing earthquakes!

    Reality again…

    Regards,
    Gonzalo (from Santiago, Chile)

  3. Claudio says:

    Oh, the Boeing landings! After that, the plane just keep “boeing, boeing, boeing”… My flight instructors had some bad times with my landings.

  4. DocSavage says:

    Not sure about the moment magnitude scale, I’ve never heard of it, but the Richter scale is base 10 logarithmic. Anything approaching a 9 is natural disaster range, the largest ever recorded hit 9.5. Exaggeration is what makes the joke IMO. =)

  5. Jerry Liu says:

    Chuck also gave a 9, a Cooper Harper 9.

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