MEET THE SUPERMARKET SEISMOLOGIST

MEET THE SUPERMARKET SEISMOLOGIST

SAN FRANCISCO (Wireless Flash) -- Most information on earthquakes is collected in labs, but a San Francisco earthquake expert prefers doing his research in supermarkets. Geophysicist Robert Nason says supermarkets are a great source for earthquake data because the number of items which fall off shelves provides a measure of how much shaking is going on. The 60-year-old Nason interviews clerks who were working during a quake to gauge the number of soup cans and other objects that crashed to the floor. He says the information helps him to more accurately determine the parameters of the quake than instruments used by experts.