[dorkbotsea-blabber] Science fair - earthquake - help

[Toby Paddock]

Thanks everyone for the help. Looks like I was thinking too narrow. 

*Well, if you love your son, you'll buy him a Mac:
*<http://www.suitable.com/tools/seismac.html>
*pablos.
Maybe someday I'll come to my senses and go mac. Someday.

*USB o-scope (per Rich)
Good idea. I don't need official seismic software for this, although it
would be cool. As long as an o-scope would trigger and display a waveform,
that's all we really need. And it doesn't have to be win95, we can use my
son's laptop with xp.
I wonder if the computer's sound card would go low enough in frequency to
use something like http://www.zelscope.com/ you mentioned. That looks
interesting.
Or if all else fails, we could just use an analog o-scope. Or maybe borrow a
digital one from work.

*galvanometers (per Joe and pablos)
Excellent idea. Strip chart recorder or... I have a set of those (thanks
Bill) that I made a x-y laser mirror set with. So maybe use 2 axes of
accelerometers to drive the mirrors and bounce a laser pointer off it. Can't
go wrong using a laser in a science fair project.
I'll have to look for a drive circuit.

Thanks everyone.
Toby
http://www.paddfam.com

> 
> 
> Toby Paddock wrote:
> > 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
> >