Over 40 Australian schools have been equipped with professional-grade seismographs, adding to Australia’s earthquake observing network and educating high school students across the country.
Managed by the Australian National University in Canberra, the Australian Seismometers in Schools project, AUSIS, aims to expose students at a secondary school level to some practical science. Schools were supplied with a seismometer which sends data to a local computer as well as sending data onto the global seismic monitoring network hosted by IRIS.
Normally installed in remote regions to get away from cultural noise, having a seismograph installed in a school environment is surprisingly useful – in a 24 hour period schools are mostly vacant, quiet places, so these instruments are regularly recording small local earthquakes and large distant earthquakes.
How wonderful it must be for the students to hear about an earthquake on the news and be able to look up their seismograph to see how it moved the earth at their school! Well done to the team at ANU in planting the seeds to grow our next generation of seismologists.
Contact the SRC if you’re interested in buying a educational seismograph for your school.