Your laptop could detect the next earthquake

fibrowitch — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:36:15 +0000

Listening to All things considered on NPR and they are interviewing a woman who developed a computer program, that uses the motion sensor in lap top computers to measure earth quakes. Most newer laptops have an accelerometer, a kind of motion sensor that detects when a computer gets dropped or shaken. If the computer gets dropped, it shuts off the hard drive to save the laptop. Gosh, wish I had one of those three years ago when Purrball knocked the laptop off the kitchen table.

Your laptop could detect the next earthquake I love this quote from Elizabeth Cochran - almost as much as I love the her last name is Cochran - wonder if she is going to have a distant relative named Zefram Okay, anyway, here is the quote --

"As soon as I knew there were these low-cost sensors inside these accelerometers, I thought it would be perfect to use them to network together and actually record earthquakes," geoscientist Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California at Riverside says.