FACILITATING STUDENT INTERACTION WITH REAL-TIME EARTHQUAKE DATA

Earthquakes can capture the attention of students and inspire them to explore the Earth. The Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology (IRIS) and Moravian College are collaborating to develop cross-platform software (jAmaSeis) that enables students to access real-time earthquake waveform data. Currently this data can be recorded from several different types of educational seismometers that are either running locally or the data can be streamed from stations nationwide. Additionally, the ability to stream data from the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) is being developed. This software gives students the opportunity to work with scientific data and enables them to experience the discovery of scientific information.

jAmaSeis facilitates the study of seismological concepts in middle school through introductory undergraduate classrooms. The user interface has been carefully designed to lead students through the steps to interrogate the real-time seismic data following a large earthquake. Data can be collected and viewed from a suite of instruments and locations. Users view a graphical representation of seismic data in real-time and can process this data to determine characteristics of seismograms such as time of occurrence, distance from the epicenter to the station, magnitude, and location (via triangulation). The software interface makes these tasks easy to accomplish and also provides graphical clues to assist student interpretations.