Post by Cat on Sept 29, 2008 14:40:29 GMT -6
How to Use Your Laptop to Locate an Earthquake
from the Economist
If you drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. A group of researchers led by Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University are putting the same accelerometer chip to an intriguing new use: detecting earthquakes.
They plan to create a network of volunteer laptops that can map out future quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers manage. Seismometers are large, expensive beasts, costing $10,000 or more apiece. They are designed to be exquisitely sensitive to the sort of vibrations an earthquake produces, which means they can pick up tremors that began halfway around the world.
By contrast, the accelerometer chips in laptops, which have evolved from those used to detect when a car is in a collision and thus trigger the release of the airbags, are rather crude devices. They are, however, ubiquitous.
Check out this link for more details: snipr.com/3xmla
Source: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
