The magnitude of an earthquake is a number that represents the what

One useful point about the moment magnitude scale is that it is logarithmic, where each whole number represents a factor of 32. Therefore, the difference in two whole numbers of the magnitude means that an earthquake is 1,000 times stronger. For example, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake releases 1,000 times more energy than a 5.0 one.

when it is at an intermediate population density