More than a week after the Japan earthquakes shook the Richter scale to a nine, a Mercer University professor says he's still watching for patterns.
He does it through a seismograph.
The seismograph is hidden in a large wooden box that looks like it's covered in tin foil.
It's attached to several computers and motion detectors, which is how physics professor Randall Peters tracks earthquakes around the world.
He says, in one chart, he focused on surface waves, showing him how much the earth has moved in a given period of time.
He says, it took just 45 minutes for the seismograph to pick up the Japan quakes, which he says caused a half centimeter shift in Middle Georgia as well.
"The reason you couldn't feel that is because it is such a slow motion," he says.
He says the recent swarm of small earthquakes in Arkansas were too mild to register on instruments in Macon.
"It depends on the proximity from the epicenter to the land," Peters says.
He compares moving land plates to a cracked hard-boiled egg.
"If you were to roll that between your hands, what you would find is that the shell fragments will snap, crackle, and pop, before they come together," he says.
He says the earth's plates are constantly moving, so a cluster of quakes like the ones in Arkansas isn't unusual.