(read about half-way through): Do we know what a 'ton of energy' is,
quantitatively??
paul d
On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> From: Cayata Dixon
>
>
>
> --------------------
> Kids make scientific leap, produce minor earthquake
> --------------------
>
> In an unprecedented experiment, 1 million British youngsters team up to show their
>energy can rival that of Mother Nature
>
> By Michael Holden
> Reuters
>
> September 8, 2001
>
> LONDON -- About a million British schoolchildren succeeded in causing an earthquake
>Friday, jumping up and down simultaneously in the world's largest scientific
>experiment.
>
> Thousands of schools throughout Britain were asked to send children to the
>playgrounds at 11 a.m. to jump up and down for a minute in hopes of creating a
>measurable quake.
>
> Organizers of the Giant Jump event, held to mark the launch of the government's
>Science Year, said it had been a success.
>
> "We're almost sure we had a million people out there jumping for us. We got some
>kind of result at every single seismometer around the country," said Nigel Pain,
>director of Science Year.
>
> "We generated something like 1/100th of a serious earthquake," he said. "That's not
>an enormous amount of energy, but it's significant."
>
> The exact number of people taking part would have to be verified, but Pain said it
>was an unofficial world record.
>
> Early estimates suggested that 75,000 tons of energy had been released during the
>minute of jumping.
>
> "Because it's dissipated across the whole country, it didn't do very much damage,"
>Pain said. "But drop that in one spot and it would have caused quite a big hole in
>the ground."
>
> Over the next two weeks, the results will be analyzed to see whether the event
>registered on the Richter scale.
>
> Scientists said a million children with an average weight of 110 pounds jumping 20
>times in a minute would release 2 billion joules of energy and trigger the equivalent
>of an earthquake measuring 3 in magnitude.
>
> The event attracted serious attention from scientists, including the Atomic Weapons
>Establishment, which maintains Britain's nuclear warheads.
>
> The world did not split in two, as one of the children surveyed before the event
>thought would happen, nor did the Earth leave the sun's orbit as feared by another.
>
> A third student came up with a more likely, if less exciting scenario: "There will
>be lots of hospital visits from people with sprained ankles."
>
>
> Copyright (c) 2001, Chicago Tribune
>
>
> --------------------
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