I just think this infograpahic of the Chile Earthquake is really cool. The earthquake was rated an 8.8 on the Moment Magnitude Scale (MMS). The MMS is the successor to the more commonly known Richter Scale.
It’s also worth comparing to the recent Haiti Earthquake, which was rated a 7 on the MMS. People who aren’t nerds like me may not be aware that the MMS, and formerly the Ricter Scale, is a logarithmic scale, not a linear one. What this means is that while the Haitian earthquake had about 50 megatons of energy, the Chilean earthquake had about 10,020 megatons of energy. That’s roughly 500 times as much energy.
Infographic Via: Matt
This infographic might be able to shed some more light:
http://www.rioleo.org/images/static/chilevshaiti.jpg