Friday, September 26, 2014

First day of land deployment - showing kids how cool seismology is - by Kara Jones


(Originally posted on September 12)

Today was the first day of the onshore deployment of the RT130s through southern Virginia and North Carolina. My partner, Yanjun Hao, and I, were just one of five teams working to deploy instruments along the two survey lines. We deployed the first two instruments at West Harnett Middle School and South Hartnett Elementary School, both outside of Lillington, NC. In both case, the fifth and sixth graders were very interested in learning about what we were doing and eager to participate. I explained to them the basic concept of P and S-waves and then asked the children to jump so that we could test that each of the channels on the sensors was working correctly. They very much enjoyed getting to see on the clié exactly what the signal they generated looked like. At both schools, I was surprised how much the children, and the teachers, knew about earthquake seismology and the intelligent questions they asked. A teacher asked whether they would detect the explosives detonated at nearby Fort Bragg, and a sixth grader named Gauge blew me away when he asked if the sensors would be able to record the sound waves generated by the planes or nearby explosions! In total, we probably spoke to 100 kids about the project today. It was a very encouraging to see how excited and interested they all were in the science. When we first arrived and explained that we would be installing a seismometer, a 5th grade teacher looked at us with wide eyed and asked "Are you seismologists?!" I nodded yes and she was so excited she started jumping up and down. Despite some rain and GPS trouble later in the day, the excitement that the elementary and middle schoolers showed about seismology was enough to make it a great start to the deployment.

At South Hartnett Elementary School in Anderson Creek, NC. I am showing one fifth grade class what the seismic signal they just generated looks like on the clié.

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