To be honest with you, I didn’t feel a thing. But many other Scientific American staffers felt the shaking a few minutes before 2 P.M. Eastern time. After checking Twitter and other sources to discover what had happened, a lot of the crew ran to their desks to begin covering the East Coast earthquake of 2011. You can find their stories and photos on our website.

And you can help researchers learn more about the quake. If you were in any of the affected areas—from Georgia to Toronto and west to Ohio—go to the website of the United States Geological Survey, the USGS. Go to their earthquake page, earthquake.usgs.gov. There you’ll see an item called Did You Feel It?, where you can share your location and your estimate of the strength of the shaking. If, like me, you didn’t feel anything, enter that, too—it’s all valuable.

Your info will help create a Community Internet Intensity Map that can provide important data about the scope of the quake and contribute to ongoing earthquake research. That’s earthquake.usgs.gov

—Steve Mirsky

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]