Spin (physics) discrete angular momenta despite having no orbital angular momentum. In some ways, spin is like a vector quantity; it has a definite magnitude, and it has a "direction" (but quantization makes this "direction" different from the direction of an ordinary vector). All elementary particles of a given kind have the same magnitude of spin angular momentum, which is indicated by assigning the particle a spin quantum number. The SI unit of spin is the (N·m·s) or (kg·m·s), just as with classical angular momentum. In practice, spin is given as a dimensionless spin quantum number by dividing the spin angular momentum
Moment magnitude scale it is based on, is not measured routinely for smaller quakes. For example, the United States Geological Survey does not use this scale for earthquakes with a magnitude of less than 3.5, which includes the great majority of quakes. Current practice in official earthquake reports is to adopt moment magnitude as the preferred magnitude, i.e., is the official magnitude reported whenever it can be computed. Because seismic moment (, the quantity needed to compute ) is not measured if the earthquake is too small, the reported magnitude for earthquakes smaller than is often Richter's . Popular press reports most often