Detecting Earthquakes With Mobile Phones
Calling, messaging, surfing and capturing pictures….Your mobile phone is capable of doing much more than just that! These devices that fit into your palm probably could be one of the most effective life-saving devices. They are capable enough to detect even the deadliest of earthquakes.
Yes! That’s right! Curious to know how? Here’s how they do it!
Some of the latest iPhone, iPad devices could work as earthquake detectors by tracking basic seismographic movements.
A seismometer is a device that is used to measure the intensity of devastating earthquakes and volcanoes.
So your mobile phone is designed to be your very own seismometer! And what’s more surprising is that you need not have to install any app, a built-in web browser is all it takes to detect earth shaking movements.
Here’s how to make convert your mobile phone into a seismometer…
1. Enter the following URL into your mobile web browser http://ctrlq.org/earthquakes/seismograph.html
2. You will see a waveform moving continuously from the right to left similar to a graph tracking seismic movements
3. If you shake your mobile phone or just move it gently the graph will reflect these changes respectively
4. The graph displays a real-time seismological movement depending on the orientation of the phone and the thrust applied to it
5. The graph will show varied reading depending upon on how heavy or light the intensity of the movement is
And if you think the code for this runs into pages written on the most sophisticated of platforms, then you are absolutely wrong!
The most amazing part about this is that the code is written in simple plain text JS.
Latest mobile devices, by default, come with gyroscopes/accelerometers and other such high-end applications. These applications are designed to detect changes in the orientation of the device and physical acceleration. These are then converted into seismographic movements that then get displayed on the browser.
The HTML5 DeviceOrientation and DeviceMotion events of the browser then capture the orientation and motion data. However, this option is designed for mobile devices.
If you want your desktop to do the same then just switch on ‘accelerator’ option from the Chrome Dev Tools’ sensor option. This will help keep a track of the seismic activities.
So next time you are busy downloading apps from your Google store, try checking this option out on your mobile phone’s web browser. Bookmark the quake-detecting URL so that you do not miss out on this life-saving tip!
Who knows! It could come to your rescue anytime, anywhere!
