MM wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:29:50 +0000, dave wrote:
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:54:03 +0000, MM wrote:
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:03:44 -0000, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:
"MM" wrote in message

Yes, I realise that this must be the case, but a brick building just
seems so solid when one is standing right next to it.

Even more solid when it falls on you :-(

Yes, I can believe that. But having experienced that tremor as the
first in my life, I just marvel at the way mother nature can gather
enough energy to wobble an entire country a few inches this way and
that. It is to me as fascinating as trying to explain television to
Charles Dickens would have been. There is nothing comparable that is
man-made. Explosives would merely result in devastation. Imagine
trying to mount, say, a whole village (just a village, not an entire
country!) on some kind of manufactured plate, then inventing some
device that could extert the energy needed to shift it like an
earthquake can. I don't think human beings could ever devise such a
device. Totally mind-boggling to me, that tremor last night.

MM
I agree entirely with your sentiments on this. The amount of energy
needed to do such a thing is incredible! I thought about a simple
man-made task say of shoveling some soil for a few feet - then to
think of most of the whole country wobbling for a few seconds - gives
some practical idea of the scale/energy involved. Amazing.

Almost inspired me to start building one of these...
http://users.viawest.net/~aloomis/seismom.htm

but I guess would need a PC running all the time as a data-logger.
It could be quite fun (in an anorak kind of way). Maybe we could setup
a UK amateur network of sites :-)

I can tell that you think a bit off-the-wall, like I do all the time!
Imagine being able to harness earthquake power to drive a generator!
Or lightning, for that matter.

MM

Lightning power has been done. But the strikes last an extremely
short time, yet the equipment has to handle the full strike energy,
and theres a lot of time between strikes. Those make for marginal
economics at best. The nearest thing I can think of to practicality
with lightning strikes is to use them to heat a pool. This minimises
equipment cost, and the large thermal capacity of the pool can
work with such an intermittent energy source. There is some place,
I forget where, where strikes are frequent, several per day, and thats
where these techs have been played with. But nothing is economically
competitive yet.


NT