The Richter Scale is the most well known of the main scales for measuring the size of shaking of an earthquake. Some earthquakes are small, while others are gigantic. To get big and small onto the same scale is difficult, so the Richter Scale says that for each tenfold increase in size of shaking, the scale increases by one. So an earthquake of magnitude (size) 2 gives ten times more shaking than an earthquake of size 1. An earthquake of size 3 gives ten times more shaking compared to an earthquake of size 2, and so on. This is not quite the same as the energy of the earthquake. 8 on the Richter Scale releases 31 times more energy than a 7, while a 9 on the Richter Scale releases 1000 times more energy than a 7.