Seismographs

[Teyl Maktoyu Ayfìwopxä]

Well, some people have been saying that the area of Western-Europe may be waiting for an earthquake of about 7.0 on Richter,
I wanna measure stuff at the area where I am with my computer, is there any software which can do this? Or is there even just a website that displays this in real-time?

[Clarke]

Building your own seismograph shouldn't be too hard, AFAIK. GIYF.

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

If you take a lokk at the seismograms, it has been extremely earthquake-activity across the globe

except Antarctica, Venezuela and Kiribati

http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2.shtml


and now have Eastern-Europe got an earthquake over 7, in Turkey

[Ningey]

If you take a lokk at the seismograms, it has been extremely earthquake-activity across the globe

except Antarctica, Venezuela and Kiribati

http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2.shtml


and now have Eastern-Europe got an earthquake over 7, in Turkey

Well, the East of Turkey is not Europe any more but Asia...

Anyway, constructing a seismograph should be fairly easy. All you need is some sort of rod with a weight at one end that you attach to a frame so that it can freely swing when the entire construction is subjected to rapid oscillations.
However, one such seismograph will only detect oscillations in one direction - to get the other two (horizontally perpendicular to the first one plus vertical) you have to construct two more, with the third one set up in such a fashion that the rod is suspended by a spring so it stays horizontal.
Now, if you don't want to put that on paper you will need some device to get the oscillations into your computer (e. g. a pot connected to an ADC and the whole thing attached to the RS232 if still present or one of the USB ports).