Things that go bump in the night

It would seem that we had a little bit of an earthquake last night. The quake is listed as having a magnitude of 3.7 by the USGS, and was felt on the islands of Oahu and Molokai. My first person account of the experience is below the fold.

I didn't notice a damn thing.

My daughter did, though, and so did my next door neighbors. My daughter came downstairs right after the quake, and told me that something had just pushed up under her bed. Naturally, being the calm, kind, considerate father that I am, I told her to stop fooling around and get back to bed - and got even firmer about the whole thing when she insisted that she wasn't fooling around. I was forced to apologize to her a few minutes later, when my neighbor came by to find out if I knew what the bang was that he and his wife had just felt. He thought something might have exploded somewhere. I went outside to look around, but aside from a slightly abnormal number of barking dogs, the neighborhood was more or less quiet.

So, here's the question. Why did all of those people feel the quake, but not me?

As it turns out, the intensity of this quake in my neighborhood was somewhere between II and III. That describes a mild quake, felt by most people indoors. In this case, I didn't feel it because of where I was and what I was doing - I was out in my workshop, standing up, putting away some tools I had just used. My workshop is indoors, but it is directly on the foundation slab, with no other flooring material. My neighbors had been sitting down and watching TV. My daughter was lying in bed, but was awake and reading. My son was in bed, but asleep, and did not wake up. The dog was inside and hid, wimpering, under the table. (He's a total coward and does that so often that I didn't think anything of it.)

All in all, this was a pretty good earthquake. It wasn't strong enough to cause harm, and it was strong enough to serve as a nice educational experience - particularly if you're a science geek like me.