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Earthquake Seismographs for Volunteers to Operate in K-12 Classrooms. Wayne D. Pennington Shannon E. Bair Seth R. Lemke Michigan Technological University. Project background The plan Software development and features Where we’re headed. Purpose.
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Earthquake Seismographs for Volunteers to Operate in K-12 Classrooms Wayne D. Pennington Shannon E. Bair Seth R. Lemke Michigan Technological University
Project background • The plan • Software development and features • Where we’re headed
Purpose • To provide low-cost earthquake seismographs for use by volunteers in schools. • Expose students to geophysics and hands-on science early in their education.
Similar Programs • MichSeis • Larry Ruff, Univ.of Michigan • PEPP • Princeton Earth Physics Project Permanent, near-research quality observatories
History of the Project Upper Peninsula Seismic Experiments In Schools
MichSeis and PEPP programs are designed for permanent installations and dedicated staff • Teachers wanted a temporary seismic station • Needed user-friendly program • Grant from SEG made this possible
The Plan • Develop a user-friendly, interactive program • Use an extremely simple and portable system A to D Converter
How do we do this? • Use the low-cost EAI S102 long-period seismograph • Use a Macintosh or PC with an inexpensive A to D converter • Write user-friendly interface with LabView software
What is LabView? • Software that uses the iconic programming language G.
Indian Ocean earthquake, June 18, 2000 Mb=7.8 Slider-bar control for instantly chang- ing the display gain of the day’s record. Universal Time, so that earthquakes can be identified from global observations. Today’s date Local Time Option to record data at one sample or 10 samples per second Night-time background noise level. P-Wave SurfaceWaves Current instant; record is added to end, rather than scrolling across. Data recorded prior to midnight (yesterday, in Universal Time) is shown in gray, indicating that it is nearly one day old. The Stomp and yell box shows the output from a hi-frequency geophone, designed to dramatically show the effect of jumping in front of the seismograph (not recorded). Amplitude of signal at this instant (changes each second). Slider-bar control for instantly changing the display gain of the 1/2-hour record. Name of file to which data is currently being written. The most-recent 30 minutes, continually scrolling slowly across to the left. Data recorded since midnight (Universal Time) is shown in yellow, in these four-hour blocks.
First, let’s look at a whole day of data. Now that we’ve recorded an earthquake, we can look at it in different ways using the Viewer program:
Next, let’s save the portion of the day containing the quake.
Name of quake file Scrollbars allow you to search the data to find the quake Starting Time Length of Time
The Future • Test the program in Upper Peninsula schools • Train volunteers to work with their local schools • Provide one day training courses in conjunction with SEG, AAPG, AGU, IRIS, and other local societies
Acknowledgments • SEG Foundation • Larry Ruff, University of Michigan