Ellwood School Visits nees@UCSB
The working Geotech Instruments Model S-13 is housed in a plexiglass case.
The sixth graders from Ellwood Elementary School visited the campus at UCSB and learned first hand how scientists measure earthquakes. Using a Geotech Instruments Model S-13 seismometer housed in a see-through plexiglass case the students were able to develop an understanding for how ground motions are measured by seismologists.
After a general presentation by Prof. Jamie Steidl on seismology and earthquakes in California, the students waited in line to jump and stomp for 10 seconds next to the seismometer and watch their "earthquakes" trace across the screen of a laptop computer connected to the instrumentation. A printout of their earthquake with the students name came out seconds later.
Physics researchers on the floor below were very accommodating to the testing going on above them, which lasted nearly an hour.
The Santa Barbara area is home to both strong earthquakes and local mountain ranges created by them. The San Andreas fault, the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates, makes a turn in a region of the fault called the "Big Bend". This turn is responsible for the transverse mountain ranges that run west to east from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles and out towards Palm Springs. The largest historical earthquake in Southern California occurred on the "Big Bend" section of the fault north and east of Santa Barbara in 1857 and was approximately a magnitude 8. Local earthquakes in the magnitude 6-7 range are not uncommon in the Santa Barbara area. It's these earthquakes that are pushing the mountain ranges up creating our beautiful scenery.
It is also these earthquakes that can cause billions of dollars in damage and loss of life. The NEES program at UCSB and at other institutions nationwide was created to better understand the effects of earthquakes on the built environment and to improve our abilities to design structures that can withstand earthquakes. The investment in research dollars into the NEES program is small in comparison with the billions of dollars in damage from earthquakes that strike urban regions. The goal of the NEES research is to reduce the losses from future earthquake by transferring the knowledge gained through research into an improved state of practice in earthquake engineering.
Recording the "kid" quake.
