You may use your smart phone to keep up with three social networks, play cutting-edge games or even make great amateur movies; you still wouldn’t be making the best possible use of all the capability at your disposal, though. A Smartphone is an Internet-connected computer a variety of sensors built in — you can use it for so much more. For instance, have you considered signing your-phone up to help with scientific research? Not every scientific project is well-funded. Your phone can be a real help. Consider these projects.

Research into noise levels

Cities need to measure environmental noise levels to make sure that they remain within safe limits. Chronic noise exposure can cause a number of major health problems, after all — learning deficits in children, cardiac problems in adults and so on. A project called NoiseTube signs up smart phone users to sample ambient noise levels wherever they are. With millions of volunteers, cities are able to keep a real-time watch on excessive environmental noise.

Research into exercise and asthma

Scientists specializing in preventive medicine at the UCLA sign up smart phone miners across the country in a research study that aims to find out if people with asthma have worse attacks depending on \Mien they exercise and where. The UCLA’s software makes use of smart phone accelerometer too — to measure how fast people move when they perform their exercises.

Meteorological predictions

While the Met department uses hundreds of high-tech satellites to track weather patterns, they have a peculiar problem — it can be hard for satellites to tell the difference between heavy snow cover and heavy cloud cover. Your iPhone can help, though. Once you install an app called SatCam, your phone will be able to alert you when there is a weather satellite overhead. Right away, you can take your phone out and take a picture of the sky directly above. A photo from below can tell the satellite what it’s looking at.

Earthquake prediction

Every smart phone contains an accelerometer to help sense which way the phone is oriented. Scientists in Italy, though, have found a new use for smart phone accelerometers —they are using them to sense ground vibrations to predict earthquakes with. When thousands of smart phone users strung across the world use their phones to record and transmit ground vibration data to the researchers, they can use the data to predict when earthquakes might occur. It’s a sort of early warning system that could save lives.

Meteor Mapping for NASA

NASA’s MeteorCounter iOS app does exactly what it says — it helps keep track of meteorites. You need to be interested in astronomy to use this app, though — you need to scan the sky and record information about every meteorite that you see.

Bird science

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society has a database of nearly two million bird observations online — the largest in the world. You can help add to this database by installing a $10 app on your Android or iOS device and contributing what you see.