The Royal Society will be shaken by the El Centro earthquake tomorrow, when the secret ingredients of the ‘El Centro’ cocktail are shaken to perfection on an earthquake-shaking table at this year's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (1-3 July).

Using real data taken from the El Centro earthquake of 1940 – the first earthquake ever to be recorded by instruments – organisers of Bristol University's ‘Movers and Shakers’ exhibit will shake the El Centro cocktail on the earthquake-shaking table that forms part of their exhibit. The Press are invited to sample the cocktail, especially devised for the occasion.

The El Centro earthquake measured 7.1 on the Richter Scale. It occurred on 18 May 1940 in Imperial Valley, California. In the town of Imperial 80 per cent of the buildings were damaged to some degree, but miraculously only nine people were killed. The shock caused 40 miles of surface faulting on the Imperial Fault, part of the San Andreas system in southern California. Total damage was estimated at about six million dollars.

When the shaking table is not used for cocktails it conveys, together with the other interactive displays at Bristol University's Movers and Shakers stand, the concept of the Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamics Engineering (BLADE). This new 20 million-pound facility at the University of Bristol will provide a cross-disciplinary approach to solving today's increasingly complex engineering problems.

Professor Colin Taylor from BLADE said: ‘Visitors to our exhibit will have a chance to build a model structure, which is then tested on our earthquake-shaking table with data from a real earthquake, such as the one at El Centro.’ He insists, however, that shaking cocktails should be left to the experts.