As students sat in class, at 3:04 p.m., a 4.8 magnitude earthquake began to shake their chairs and sway projector screens. ­

Chris Langer, a librarian in the Henry Madden Library, was teaching class in Engineering East when he noticed something was happening.

“It wasn’t a huge shake but you could see the projector screen shaking,” Langer said. “I would have though that is was something being dropped or something like that, but the whole projector screen and the projector was shaking. So you could see the screen moving up and down quite a bit.”

The epicenter of the earthquake was about 5 miles away from Big Pine, according to the United States Geological Survey’s website.

“Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater there are several thousand such shocks annually are strong enough to be recorded by sensitive seismographs all over the world,” the website said.

Beven Dinis, a senior public health major, was eating her lunch at Taco Bell when she felt the shake.

“I didn’t realize it at first but then I thought, ‘Am I just feeling something, or is this really happening?’ she said. “My chair started moving.”

Nahum Diaz, freshman criminology major, was on the third floor of the library studying when he felt the quake.

“I was just doing my homework and then I felt the floor move and everybody was like, ‘What? What is happening?’ Diaz said. “So I saw everybody else realize it too so I knew it wasn’t just me. It was enough for me to feel it but it wasn’t a lot.”