[dorkbotsea-blabber] Science fair - earthquake - help

[Toby Paddock]

My son is doing a science fair project on a table-top earthquake machine.
I'm looking for a CHEAP and especially EASY way to capture and display
seismic waveforms on a computer. Most of what I'm finding on the web for
amateur seismology is either expensive or pretty complicated. And I'm pretty
cheap and lazy.

I'm not worried about the sensor. We can use a MEMS accelerometer or
coil/magnet or even a geophone if I can find one. No problem. And it doesn't
have to be real sensitive or calibrated.

But the a/d and the software I don't know about. I couldn't program my way
out of a paper bag, so simple is good. 3 channels of a/d would be great, 2
would be fine, and 1 would be OK. If the software ran on win95, I could use
my $5 garage sale laptop.

The earthquake stick/slip model thing is something like this:
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/deformation/modeling/eqmodel.html

Thanks,
Toby