Have you ever thought what is your laptop made of? At least, I think I know everything inside it, and how it basically works. But I didn’t think of something: my laptop has an accelerometer inside, it’s a tiny chip containing lots of thin and parallel pieces of metal that move when acceleration is present, and change the capacity between them. That is how they detect the acceleration (almost the same as you do in your car with your ears).
Some computer geeks put their brains to the work and hacked this feature of modern laptops, learned how to use the accelerometer function, and linked about 1500 laptops, in a network between them, to control… guess what… earthquake activity!
Their network has already detected several quakes, including a magnitude 4.5 quake in LA in July. Led by Elizabeth Cochran at the University of California, Riverside, and Jesse Lawrence at Stanford University, QCN uses the same BOINC platform for volunteer computing that projects like SETI@home rely on.
There is a catch with the QCN sensors, though: getting accurate coordinates for their position. At present, since most laptops do not have GPS, the project relies on coordinates that the users type in. Fortunately, rough coordinates can also be automatically retrieved from network routers that the laptop is connected to, as a backup.
Cool invention, isn’t it? If used properly, it could one day save lives…
