Local News - December 2003

North students chart earthquakes

Seismograph checks globe every hour

By SARAH GRANO, Staff Writer

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A small machine resting on the floor of a science classroom at North Lincoln High School detects earthquakes all over the world everyday.

“It’s just amazing all the things that are going on that we don’t know about,” said Andrew Reep, a junior at the school.

“We find two or three earthquakes a week that we think are pretty serious, but they don’t get reported.”

North Lincoln is the only high school in the state to have an AS-1 seismograph. Usually only colleges and universities have such equipment.

The school’s device is hooked up to the Internet and updates worldwide seismic activity every ten minutes on a national Web site.

“There’s only a handful of people who are doing this,” said Debbie Michael, a science teacher at the school.

Michael received the seismograph from Incorporated Research Institution for Seismology (IRIS), an organization that studies earthquakes.

She signed up for a chance at receiving the $500 machine at a science teacher conference in San Diego and was excited when she found out her request had been accepted. The machine is currently on loan from IRIS.

Students in her classes check what the seismograph has recorded every day.

“I find it just kind of fascinating that modern day science actually has something like this,” said Chris Honeycutt, a junior at the school.

“Here in America, we can tell if they’re having an earthquake right now somewhere in the middle east.”

Michael uses the machine in both her physics and physical science classes to teach about waves and the way the earth works.

“It gets them more involved, and it brings earth science into their lives and makes it relevant,” Michael said.

“It just made my students much more aware of the seismic waves that are underneath our feet that we can’t detect, and if you look at the instrument it doesn’t look like much, but it is doing that.”

Michael’s Web site currently has examples of earth quakes recorded in the Dominican Republic, Japan, Siberia and the Kazakhistan and Xinjiang border.

Of course, not all recorded movement takes place in far away lands. Even North Lincoln itself has slight shifts that affect the seismograph.

“This is a new building,” Michael said. “It’s kind of on some fill dirt, and it’s not settled.”

Information recorded by North Lincoln’s seismograph can be found at www.earthscope-eon.org and http://webpages.charter.net/debmichael.

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Staff Writer Sarah Grano can be reached at 704-735-3031 or sgrano@ltnews.com

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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