[SoaS] [support-gang] [IAEP] Quake Catcher Network

[Nicholas Doiron]

The accuracy of an individual sensor, yes, is suspect.  But that's why
Stanford is asking for many sensors to be registered -- a thousand or
laptops moving simultaneously (or in outgoing waves) could triangulate the
location of an earthquake before the waves even register at the main USGS
seismometers.

These projects also connect the kids to science in a direct way.  Most
volunteer science projects are a bit more hands-on and a little less
hardware-intensive.  I've been interested for awhile in seeing the laptops
connected to a project such as this -- see
http://www.scienceforcitizens.net/ for some more examples =)

Regards,
Nick Doiron

On Sun, April 18, 2010 8:04 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:
> Caryl,
>
>
> I think it is wonderful you do share about this.  It is always
> interesting to see how some idea can have unreached effects and become a
> wish for more
>
> I have been quite involved in seismic monitoring in my day, and to
> imagine personal computers could be used for that, beats everything else
> this week as to wishful thinking turned into vaporware, even though I
> spent a lot of time reading so called evaluations of ICT for education,
> and there was that revival of the crank...
>
> Now, if you can, and abusing a lot on your patience, please do not see
> what I said as a criticism to you, or that you should not share with us
> this kind of stuff.
>
> Actually, for someone like me it is extremely valuable to be aware of
> what is going on out there, and in the absence of things that make sense
> completely, it does help me hugely to, well, hear about this kind of
> things, because at some level these do reflect real dreams and desires
> which are perfectly true and valid, even though their put into effect is
> not.
>
> I guess I could go into detail, but the basic reason this cannot work is
> separating "real" seismic data from any other, from steps close to the
> machine, to a car rolling outside...  This of course will not stop a
> skilled grantwriter, who would offer to prepare software that can
> discriminate data.  However, the nearly mathematically unsolvable problem
> is in separating *overlapping* data, which is the real reason they forbid
> cellphones on planes.
>
> That is why real seismeters are set underground, as far away from human
> activity as possible.
>
>
> On 04/18/2010 05:31 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>
>> Hi...
>>
>>
>> Here is something intriguing I heard about on NPR yesterday.  It is a
>> Seismic Monitoring program that can run in the background on computers
>> that have built-in accelerometers (newer Macs) or PCs with an external
>> one with usb connection.  The hope is to have a world wide network of
>> computers sensing quakes, especially in places where there are many
>> quakes.
>>
>> It is designed to be an educational project with schools involved
>> doing "citizen science" (sort of like CoCoRaHS).  They have
>> interactive/educational software and seismic monitoring software.
>>
>> Disclaimer... I haven't tried the software yet so I can't recommend it
>> one way or the other until I do.
>>
>> Does the XO have an accelerometer? No matter if it doesn't because it
>> has usb ports to spare.  Any chance of someone getting a version of the
>> software to work on the XOs?  Maybe one of our developers who knows what
>> would have to be done to get it to work on the XO could contact the
>> Quake Catcher Network and ask it they could do it?
>>
>>
>> Here is a link to the site:
>>
>>
>> http://qcn.stanford.edu/downloads/
>>
>>
>> Looks like it is based at Stanford.
>>
>>
>> Caryl
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
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