Marian College students will be contributing to earthquake research after a small shed at the college was made the cozy home of a brand new seismograph.
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The seismograph is a first for Griffith education and is one of 49 similar units hosted by schools across Australia.
The unit was installed by Australian National University researchers Dr Michelle Salmon and Dr Sima Mousari, who drove up from Canberra this week to teach Marian College how to use the device to record seismic activity.
Giving a lecture at Marian College, Dr Salmon said the machine will be measuring the velocity of movements in the Earth’s crust and and the Australian Plate with the students to be especially be on the lookout for wave like ripples.
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According to Dr Salmon a wave like vibration against the Earth’s crust could mean a number of natural and man made phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and even a nuclear explosion, and depending on their size can be read by seismographs around the world.
“The (students) contribute to our ANU hazard mapping, and they contribute to us looking at the structure of Australia with what we would call pre-competitive information about how Australia has been put together, that gives us ideas about where we might want to look for minerals,” Dr Salmon said.
“This is actually an area that is not particularly well monitored in Australia, it is a gap in the seismic-network and we are slowly trying to fill those gaps.
“We are hoping to increase our instrumentation hopefully by another 10 seismograph’s (across Australia) over the next two years, we will have a much better idea about the small earthquakes which informs us about the bigger earthquakes.
“Usually where you get a lot of smaller earthquakes is where you get the bigger earthquakes so it helps us a lot with the seismic hazard mapping,” Dr Salmon said.
According to Dr Mousari the information picked up by these seismographs can also be benefit international research after being recorded by Marian College.
Dr Mousari said theoretically a Marian College student could help inform other countries about a potential tsunami by reporting readings online to the Australian Tsunami Warning System.
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