Tag Archives: Earthquake engineering

How to Play Football With Nails and Popsicle Sticks

Well, actually if you do that you’ll be infringing a patent. I love reading patents, but I rarely understand them. This one I do, since it uses words I understand, like ‘roofing nails’ and ‘elastic bands’: clipped from patft.uspto.gov A board game for at least two individuals to play. The board game is a modified… Read More »

Google Earth as Harbinger of Doom

Researchers are using Google Earth, the New York Times/IHT reports, to look for evidence of giant tsunamis, signs that the Earth has been hit by comets or asteroids more regularly, and more recently, than people thought: This year the group started using Google Earth, a free source of satellite images, to search around the globe… Read More »

Indonesia’s Quake

For anyone interested in helping the victims of the Yogyakarta earthquake, in which thousands of people have been killed inside their heavy stone and slate homes, here’s Indonesia Help – Earthquake and Tsunami Victims. Sadly, this website was originally set up for the tsunami, now 17 months ago, but has been quickly resurrected to provide… Read More »

Googling the Tsunami

More from Google Trends, the sad rise and fall in our interest in the tsunami: At the end of 2004, the Asian Tsunami piqued/peaked our attention, but the later blips (F, the last little flag on the chart, is the first anniversay) reflect, perhaps, how quickly such things are forgotten.

Earthquakes, Power Laws and Sparklines

The Asian tsunami, and the quake near Nias, bring home how volatile the region is, particularly Indonesia. (Another quake this morning sent Nias residents fleeing into the hills in panic.) But I thought an interesting way of illustrating this volatility might be to do a sparkline of earthquakes and their magnitude around the world in… Read More »