Larger imagePeople rubbing the nose of Robert Andrews Millikan's bust for "good luck".

By: Alfredo Gonzalez July 29, 2008

Larger imageMargaret Vinci welcoming the interns into the South Mudd Laboratory building.

The Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (USEIT) interns from various universities went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) on July 18, 2008 to learn more about seismology.

Larger imageMargaret Vinci showing the Earthquake Exhibit Center

After the group got off the bus, Robert de Groot, who is the education program manager at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), talked to the interns about when he worked in the Milikan library in high school. He pointed out the Robert Andrews Millikan library, a place where he worked in his younger days. Robert de Groot then led the group to a bust of Robert Andrews Millikan and told everyone to rub the nose of the bust for “good luck”.

Larger imageAnthony in the media room showing the interns a physical model of the motion caused by different earthquakes

Margaret Vinci then welcomed the interns into the South Mudd Laboratory building and gathered the group in a display room that contained posters and monitors that exposed information about earthquakes. There was a particular monitor that was turned off and its method of retrieving information is now obsolete. The name of this outdated system is the Caltech USGS Broadcast of Earthquakes (CUBE). The CUBE system depended on phone lines as a medium for transferring information and it only pertained to southern California. The new system is the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) which is web-based and has a partnership with federal, state, and university agencies involved in California. CISN is made up of more than 360 seismic stations, creating one of the densest seismic networks in the world. A seismic station is an instrument inside a bolt buried in the ground that senses shaking. The importance of the instrument is that it has the capability of giving an early warning of large earthquakes which can be very important for “life-lines” that are the essence of human survival. The new system’s results can be seen on monitors outside the media room.

The second person that the interns talked with was Anthony, a seismic analyst who is on call twenty-four hours a day. He gathered the group in the media room. The media room is the place where the different television reporters gather after an earthquake occurs to ask a professional seismologist questions. In the media room, Anthony showed the interns a physical model of the motion caused by different earthquakes. Before the presentation, I thought that earthquakes affected buildings of different sizes in the same way. I was amazed to see that a large building suffers the most damage when it experiences slow and long seismic waves, and a small building suffers the most damage when it experiences fast and small seismic waves.

I believe that the fieldtrip broadened the minds of all the interns because they were able to discern the process that is involved in studying earthquakes. Hopefully next time the USEIT interns visit Caltech, they will be able demonstrate their own studies to Margaret Vinci and Anthony.

View field notes from other UseIT Interns:   Select an intern... Rediscovering Urban LA Palos Verdes Peninsula The Lowdown: VDOs and Beyond Archiving the Past for the Future