Team Number: 24
Team Number: 24
School Name: PicShip Middle School
Area of Science: Earth Science
Project Title: Earthquakes in New Mexico
Earthquakes are one of mother nature's most destructive forces on Earth. They can level a major city or town in a matter of minutes.Earthquakes are a natural occurrence that not only effect our state, but also have a major impact on the world.
Earthquakes are associated with volcanic eruptions and crustal deformation. The location and movement of swarms of tremors indicate the movement of magma through the volcano. Although there are no active volcanoes in New Mexico, [the substance of] magma movement is present within the crust, especially in the Socorro area. So in fact there is earthquake activity in the state of New Mexico.
New Mexico has an average of 4 Earthquakes per year (>= M4). This is compared to California with 501 and Japan with 699 per year of similiar size. Earthquakes in New Mexico have been documented as far back as 1869. These Earthquakes range from an magnitude 6.5 to 2.0 or less. Studies have shown that Earthquakes of 7.5 or greater have not occurred in New Mexico very often (every thousand years).
The Socorro, New Mexico area has the largest number of Earthquakes compared to the rest of the state. The reason for this large number of earth movements in Socorro is the location. Socorro and Magdelena were built on top of a deep magma body (about 19km). As the magma body inflates, so does the earth above the Socorro area. The New Mexico Tech Geophysics program and IRIS PASSCAL facilities on campus study all Earthquake activities in New Mexico and the world.
Earthquake data is important to people who would like to know if living in New Mexico could cause the loss of life and personal belongings. In the beginning, our team was hoping to develop a program that predicts earthquakes. One of our mentors, Rick Aster[from IRIS] at New Mexico Tech; told our team that predicting earthquake programs have not been developed. He also stated,"If you can come up with a successful Earthquake prediction program, you will recieve a prize!"
Due to predicting earthquakes being a time consuming task and insufficient data, our team created a C++ program based on the data provided by Rick Aster that will:
After many trail and error attempts to create a C++ program to solve our problem of graphing and comparing our data, we were able to create a program that allows us to:
Our team is also able to explain what the differences between earthquakes in New Mexico and California.
Our team's C++ program and graphing information can be seen in the next section of this report.
Team Members
Sponsoring Teacher(s)
Project Mentor(s)
