Middle Schoolers Become Official Seismologists

Middle School Science Teacher, Kate Baker, attended a workshop at the National Science Teachers Association conference last year in Atlanta, Georgia having received funding from the CDS Professional Growth Committee. There she heard about a program to provide seismometers for classrooms, wrote a grant, and it arrived this fall. The seismometer was obtained by Ms. Baker from IRIS (http://www.iris.edu/), The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a university research consortium dedicated to exploring the Earth's interior through the collection and distribution of seismographic data. To make things even more exciting, CDS has been asked to join the Puerto Rican Seismic Network (http://redsismica.uprm.edu/english/), since the seismometer station they currently use on St. Croix is broken. The Puerto Rican network has offered to provide us with a broadband seismometer (and construction costs) if we would become their official station on St.Croix. Each week four Middle Schoolers will be the Seismologists of the Week. They will examine the seismogram from the previous 24 hours, looking for important seismic events. When events occur, the media is contacted and the students share the data with them.