My Day and Math

Come home. Queue up hard rock station. Relax.

And then we shall delve into what my day dealt with. So how many of you know how a seismograph works? Show of hands? Well it's not too complex depending on the type of machine you are using.

I'm sure everyone has seen the old type of seismograph with the pendulum suspended above the rotating drum of paper. We really don't use those anymore. Modern seismographs are completely electronic and full of all sorts of neat bells and whistles.

Modern seismographs measure displacement in the ground by way of sensors and accelerometers. It takes these measurments in frequencies. Specifically I would not get to play with an accelerometer (those are not cheap) so I basically get a single transducer called a geophone. That's fine. But these things are better.  Tell me these things are not amazing.

But the geophone is basically where my foray into math and harmonics began today. That's right I said harmonics. Basically lets get down to business, the machine that I need must take 1000 sample per second. Don't question. Just accept it. Each sample is a frequency reading from the geophone that will be stored in the machine. Those frequencies will all later need to be merged together into a giant harmonic chord of doom. And if I have learned anything! I have also learned that the equation that merges those samples is the FFT and God if I got this wrong I'll be reeeeally embarassed.

Later when I want to take the data and upload it to a computer I will need to make sure I have the proper software. ENTER where I spent my day figuring out what kind of software you need for this. Not just asking vendors if they provide it but making sure that I understand what the software needs to do so that I can make sure we get what is required.