Your Laptop Could Detect The Next Earthquake

By downloading a free program, you and your laptop could help researchers pinpoint earthquakes and even sound an early warning to surrounding areas.

Newer models of laptops manufactured by companies like Apple and Lenovo contain accelerometers -- motion sensors meant to detect whether the computer has been dropped. If the computer falls, the hard drive will automatically switch off to protect the user's data.

"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," says geoscientist Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California, Riverside.

So a few years ago, Cochran got in touch with Jesse Lawrence, a colleague at Stanford. They whipped up a program called the Quake-Catcher Network. It's a free download that runs silently in the background, collecting data from the computer's accelerometer and waiting to detect an earthquake.

Laptop accelerometers aren't as sensitive as professional-grade seismometers, so they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above. But when a laptop does sense a tremor, it'll ping the researchers' server. "And when our server receives a bunch of those, we then say, 'This is a likely earthquake,' " Lawrence says.

Up until now, scientists have been hampered by the lack of enough sensors around the world to monitor and record earthquake data. Cochran and Lawrence hope their application will help build a network of earthquake sensors thousands of laptops strong.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126073353&ft=1&f=1007

Quake-Catcher site: http://qcn.stanford.edu/

Muh! Interesting.

The laptop will sit still while the furniture floats around... happens every earthquake. the only way they'll get shake data is when the laptop hits the ground, which will tell you when that happened, not how large the earthquake was.

Unless people tie their laptops to something that will move WITH an earthquake, like the floor, and not slide around, like the desk or any furniture, there won't be any data to collect.

I doubt if Stanford is going to this much effort to collect useless data. I believe that they have taken a lot of factors into account. They also are employing desktops in various locations.

Really. How could it? And the last big quake I was in, the building moved 3 feet in one direction and then snapped back in the other direction while my table and laptop sat still, along with myself, since we're not tethered to the earth.

And scientists in universities often study useless crap.

and there was no effect on you? If the building moved, you moved unless it had some interesting construction. I would bet that the laptop sensor could pick up vibrations.

No way could anything sitting on my desk record anything more than a slight slide. Certainly not the force of the quake. And therein lies the problem. Even if you detected some force, how would the software know the difference between a quake and someone repositioning their laptop on the desk? Answer: it can't. And it can't therefore detect quakes.

Now, if some enterprising individuals wanted to donate a laptop and tie it directly to the ground, maybe that would work. Otherwise, no, not at all.

3 feet in one direction and then the other if you and the computer were suspended in mid-air. Otherwise the computer certainly moved in space, even if it did not move relative to the desk.
If the program is in there to see if computer fell the measurement would likely begin with the sudden movement before it falls to get more information on the fall. So even if it shifts through space and doesn't fall that move would provide the earthquake info

What a shame.

turns it off to protect your data (newer laptops.)

According to your theory, seismometers shouldn't be able to detect an earthquake either.

Really, you should read the article. I heard the story on NPR yesterday, and it was very interesting.

To measure force, one needs a steady reference point. Absent one, nothing of consequence can be measured or inferred.

As the table slides under the laptop, the laptop cannot measure the force as it is not affected by it. This is engineering 101 people. Whip a tablecloth off a table full of dishes and they will remain still. The cups and saucer are, anthropomorphically speaking, unable to tell you anything about the force of the table cloth passing under them. Only a fully tethered laptop could measure anything of accuracy. And since virtually no one secures their laptops to anything earthly substantial, they cannot, like the plates, measure any force.

I understand your point. It isn't clear what they hope to do with this data. It appears they are predominately interested in determining where and when earth quakes occur, and their propogation. I'm not in that business so I can't say what they might need or want. I understand your point, accelerometers measure what they are attached to. Sitting on a table, or a couch, they'll measure the response of the couch to the earth quake. I'm not sure what use that is. Sitting on a table, they'll measure the response of the table, as well as the dynamics of the table/laptop interface (most likely alot of friction driven sliding and bouncing around). Again, I'm not sure how useful that is. Given enough data points, they could possible determine when and where the effects of earthquakes occur. Useful for time based analysis of the propogation of the quake, that'd be about all. And I suspect, considering their low sensetivity, it would only be good to a few seconds or more.

If it were I, I would probably use a slightly more organized approach and approach specific organizations and solicit their cooperation in the collection of this data. You could probably get alot of building owners to install cheap accelerometers and integrate them into their data networks. I'm a tad surprised that building codes these days don't already mandate some seismic measurements and the data collection. If nothing else so that building integrity can be evaluated after a quake. Alternately, getting house alarm companies to install and monitor this data could be useful as well.

forwarding the links to my friends and family in California.

Thanks for posting them, now I can just cut and paste instead of looking them up myself. :)