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Finally up and running...
The Geography and Geology Department are pleased to announce that the Seismology Live Data System is finally built and many thanks go out to all persons involved. Special thanks go out to the Technology Department and ICT Department who made this all possible with their technological know how.
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The story so far...
Here at Methodist College Geography and Geology Department we were looking at ways in which we could explore all aspects of earthquakes and their causes and impacts. We were approached by the Geological Survey Northern Ireland (GSNI) and the British Geological Survey (BGS) and were asked if we would take part in UK Seismology Project. This allows students to investigate how seismology data is recorded and used around the world. This project is running throughout about 400 schools in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It aims to encourage cross-curricular links between Earth Sciences, Physics, Maths, IT and Technology. We of course jumped at the chance and quickly set about getting our seismology hardware ready. The SEP seismometer uses Amaseis software and is a simple horizontal seismometer. (see picture above)
Dr Paul Denton from the British Geological Survey paid a visit to the college and gave all interested staff (which also included members from the Physics Department) a quick tutorial on how to set it up and interpret the data. Our ICT Support staff were on hand to deal with the finer points of putting this on the internet and uploading the live data to both our website and the BGS website. Although Paul was only here for a short visit we were delighted to get the seismometer working and hope to set up an active Earthquake club to monitor earthquakes around the world on a weekly basis.