Miyamura High School (91)

The Miramura High School team (#91) is from Gallup. This year they've submitted a project titled Simulation of Seismic Activity on Terrain and Urban Centers.

Proposal
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_proposal1112.php?team_id=91

Team: 91

School: Miyamura High

Area of Science: Earth and Space Sciences

Proposal: The Geology and World Simulator will be a program that generates a random world and simulates the changes that occur to that world over time. This will create an accurate evolution of a world including its rock cycle and plate tectonics. The possibility of life developing on the generated world will also be included. The simulation will reveal how things like these effected each other in the formation of Earth, and continue to effect the planet. This project will be programmed in the Java programming Language and feature a hex-based display that creates a map of hexagon tiles. Each tile will be contain a certain terrain feature, such as an ocean, grassland, or volcano. The interactions between adjacent tiles will move the simulation along.

Team Members:

 * Kirtus Leyba
 * Tabitha Hallock
 * Jeffrey Young
 * Sridivya Komaravolu

Sponsoring Teacher:

 * Andy Melenchek

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=91

Interim:

Problem Definition:
Earthquakes happen everywhere in the world. Even far from fault lines, seismic activity may occur. Understanding of this natural phenomenon would greatly benefit the safety of the world. This project will shed some light on the effects of seismic activity on terrain and cities or towns. This will include the effects of earthquakes on buildings and structures.

Our Plan:
In order to make a model of seismic activity, we will develop a program in either the Java Programming Language or, if we need be, another programming language. This model will simulate first and for most the movement that is experienced by terrain during intense seismic activity. It will also employ statistics from past earthquakes to show probable effects on buildings and structures that could be built on the terrain. This could be represented by a percentage of buildings in a region that remained standing at the end of a seismic event.

The simulation would have an interface that would allow the user to choose the intensity of the earthquake, and then to watch a map which shows the effects. We hope to include different types of seismic conditions. The map will be shown through a hex based grid. These hexed will help the simulation run, by causing reactions from hex to hex, as in the "game of life".

Progress to Date:
Up to now our team has worked mostly on learning the programming part of the development. We have worked using online resources to learn the syntax of the Java Programming Language. Through this process we have made simple programs and developed an understanding of how to begin our development process. We have created a basic interface so far, and have not yet added the simulation to it. We have created a forum for our team to share thoughts and files. Also, we have dramatically cut down the size of the project. Our earlier proposal implied a much more complicated task that would test far too many factors. Now we have clear direction and a reasonable task.

Expected Results:
We expect to complete a strong computational model of seismic activity and earthquakes described and we expect it to provide insight on patterns that emerge when studying seismic activity. This could help bolster our understanding of earthquakes and the physics behind them. Hopefully, the data yielded from this experiment could help in understanding when different effects of seismic activity occur. This could benefit the safety in architectural design.

Citations:
http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston?blend=1&ob=4 (thenewboston's java tutorials)

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php

http://www.data.scec.org/

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/waves.html

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

Interim Comments
HI my name is Eleanor Walther and I have been asked to give you feedback on your interim report. I am a champion for Expanding Your Horizons, Project GUTS and the Challenge, being head judge of the EXPO in April. I am retired from Sandia National Laboratories, where I was the Principal Member of the Technical Staff, Emergent Threats. I having been working with the Challenge since 1998.

I'm glad to see you have scoped down your project. You might want to scope it down even further. Consider building a model with one geological type and one building type and get that running first. Try to pick those parameters so that you actually have validation and verification data for your model. Earthquakes are a very complicated topic. You need to decide what the resolution of your model will be.

Are you going to build a physics model or just use statistical data to make your predictions? Be sure and get that clear in your mind before you start programming.

Also be sure that you can explain the game of life. Your judges may not know the details of that model.

Congratulations on completing the milestones so far.