Seismograph lab

CREATING A SEISMOGRAPH LAB

Problem:
How to create a seismograph that would properly record the simulated earthquakes.

Guiding Question:
How does the speed of the paper affect the data?

Hypothesis:
If you move the table faster, then the frequency and amplitude of the earthquake waves will be smaller.

Materials:
1. Cardboard box (to hold the paper)
2. Pen (to record the data)
3. String (to hold the pen)
4. Ruler (to hold the pen)
5. Lots of tape (to tape the rulers together)
6. Scissors
7. Notebook (to make the paper higher so the pen can touch it)
8. Chair (to hold the ruler)
9. Table (to make an earthquake)
10. Long paper (to be able to have a lot of trials)

Procedure:
1. Take any cardboard box that is about 40 cm long and 14 cm wide. Put it on a table where you will create the earthquake.
2. Take two rulers of any kind and tape them together to form a 90 degrees angle. Take one end of the ruler and stick it to the side of the seismograph- but make sure you stick them tightly so the rulers will be balanced!
3. For the rulers to be COMPLETELY perfect, take 1-2 heavy metals and tape them on top of one ruler so that the pen is more likely to touch the paper.
4. Take a thick notebook and place it on the cardboard box so that the paper which will be placed on the notebook will be high enough for the pen to touch it.
5. Place a long piece of paper which is about 25 cm long on the cardboard box
6. Then take a school chair and place it on the table- Fix the ruler with the tape into the chair
YOUR SEISMOGRAPH IS CREATED!
7. One partner should shake the table. First he/she should shake the table at slow movement, then at constant movement and finally with strong force. The other partner should move the paper (while the table is shaking) Observe what happens.
8. Repeat the previous steps

This is how your seismograph should look:




Record and analyze:
The data is presented on the pictures of our seismograph


Picture 1:



Picture 2:




Data analysis:
From the pictures above we can see that if we move the paper faster, the graph will look less frequent (like on the first part of the picture.) If we move the paper slower, then the shaking of the table would be fully recorded and the amplitude and frequency will be much higher.

Conclusion:
We can conclude that our hypothesis is correct. If the paper movement is faster, then it will decrease the amplitude of our earthquake waves. In a good designed seismograph you SHOULD NEVER MOVE THE PAPER FAST BECAUSE YOU CAN LOSE THE HIGH FREQUENCY AND THE AMPLITUDE OF THE EARTHQUAKE. I can conclude that this is very important to design a good speed of the paper (it should be slow). Also, the pen has to be strongly tight so that it doesn’t move with the paper. Thirdly, the height has to be exactly corresponding so that the pen doesn’t push on the paper.

Further inquiry:
I have a couple of things to warn myself for the future. Firstly, we unfortunately didn’t take pictures of everything we observed, we should also have done several trials and record each of them ; In the future, I advice myself to do an easy and hard shake with a slow and fast movement of the paper. However, in this case we should have seen the validity of our data and we should have had a good conclusion.