Young Inventors Get Jolt

By C. MacDonald

Students get to show their creativity every year at science and engineering fairs throughout California. I participated in one as a junior high school student, creating a seismograph with the help of two brainy peers. The result was a fascinating exhibit at the county science fair winning a first place award.

Elated, we decided to keep our machine on during the night. What a night we choose! The evening of Friday, March 27, 1964 went down in history when the Great Alaskan 9.2 Earthquake's after-tremors were felt across the Bay Area. The next morning, our excited team rushed to the science hall to see how our seismograph had recorded history. Read the full story...>

The "earthquake register" featured a wooden dowel and platform, string, butcher paper, an Erector Set engineer, a coffee can and my friend's geometrical calculations. (He went on to UC Berkeley and became a scientist!)

Everything worked fine in our trials and we took the seismograph to the science fair. With the flip of a switch, the coffee can rotated and a pen recorded on butcher paper vibrations so sensitive that if someone stomped on the ground near the contraption, the jolt would be recorded.

Then came the judges. Three inquisitive local scientists questioned us. Our machine was activated and performed very well. Although the very serious, long-faced analysts never said anything about how we did, they must have liked it because There were even newspaper and TV reports how the famous

To our horror, it had not recorded a single quiver!

Embarrassed, we didn't tell anyone that we had left it on that night and returned home, glad the judging has been done the day before. It was a very humbling experience--a final jolt we never forgot!

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