WHAT’S SHAKING? MANUFACTURING & ASSEMBLING AN AS-1 EDUCATIONAL SEISMOMETER FOR UNDERGRADUATE STEM RESEARCH

Students at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ, who are involved in the STEM Student Union meet up weekly to work on the SeismoSTEM project, working on manufacturing, assembling, and learning more about the purpose and uses of seismometers. So far, we have two vertical instruments: a TC-1 and an AS-1 we constructed and assembled ourselves. The AS-1 has a period of approximately 1.5 seconds, which can detect earthquakes from all over the world. We began by fabricating the parts by cutting the aluminum sheets for the base, post, and boom, as well as drilling the holes according to diagrams. Afterwards, we cut the steel plates for the magnetic damper, which prevents long-term oscillations. Once the machining was completed, it was properly calibrated. We soldered the Arduino Uno board to the NerDAQ amplifier. The Arduino microcontroller is the main motherboard of the seismometer; it connects the copper wire, using a screw terminal, to the wires of the Arduino board. This then connects to any personal computer via a USB connection. Later on, the copper wire, which induces an electric current, was spun around the gauge, which was measured to be 500 Ohms. Seismic signals can be viewed and analyzed via jAmaSeis, a Java-based program which can also be used to connect seismic networks, via IRIS servers. This allows us to share our data with others and to view other stations’ data as well.

The purpose of this project is to incorporate our seismic stations around the college campus, while periodically monitoring them. Overall, the objective of this project is to learn more about geology and seismology, but, more specifically, it deals with the construction and assembly of seismometers, while learning more about the different types. In the future, we would also like to manufacture and assemble horizontal or three-axis seismometers, allowing us to capture seismic waves in all three dimensions.