Team: 32
School: Los Alamos Mid
Area of Science: Earth and Space Science
Proposal: The planet Earth has a core made up of a solid inner core surrounded by a liquid outer core. These two cores combine make up the Earth’s core and it produces the magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field protects every life form on Earth from the Sun’s strong solar wind, a stream of charged particles.
I plan to utilize the seismic data from the US Geological Survey to calculate the outer radius of the Earth’s core. The methodology that I will use to calculate the outer core’s radius is:
a. Select multiple earthquakes from around the world.
b. Review the seismogram data from various seismic stations for each earthquake to identify the
S-wave and the P-wave.
c. Calculate the S-wave shadowing location. The S-wave shadowing location is the distance from the
earthquake where the S-wave is no longer recorded.
d. Use the maximum distance at which the S-wave for each earthquake disappears to calculate the
Earth’s core radius.
I plan to write a computer code using the python programming language that will perform the mathematical calculations to calculate the average Earth’s outer core radius.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: NA