Scale graphs
Fragment of a discussion from User talk:SeanNugent
It has to mean something. I've been looking, the most reasonable explanation we can give is that it represents the largest amplitude of the seismic waves released in a earth snap (I don't recall the exact term for that). it also is possibly, 1.2 = 1.2 x 10^something. I still need to look closer. All this in order to explain how the Richter scale works on a logarithmic scale.