re: The earthquake game - myth? Any geologists out there?

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Again, loud has nothing to do with causing the eartquake. It's the vibration of the earth that caused the seismic recording.

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Please stop acting like you know anything about geology or seismic wave geophysics.

Seismic "geophones" or "seismographs" record acoustic pulses. These pulses are vibrations caused by a FORCE. The force could be created in the subsurface(earthquake), or on the surface. All you need is something to generate s-wave or p-waves. You could bang a hammer on the ground and a seismograph would pick it up. I'm a geologist and current master student here at LSU.

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You and your little nerdy buds were just too busy sniffin rocks to tell us about it.

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If sniffing rocks lands me a 6 figure starting salary with stock options then I'm nerdy as frick...

I just added a new piece to my collection yesterday morning.
This is the "earthquake" program

Actually I have a buddy who's master's thesis deals with the Haynesville, another who is working on the Tuscaloosa marine shale. The Louisiana Oil patch is going to EXPLODE sometime soon in the near future. "Making-it-rain" will be a daily chore for some people...

This is so cool. I started the geekiest thread ever.

What you're looking at from the seismic printout is the recorded surface wave. It's really just a record of what was happening in the immediate area.Even traffic over on Florida Blvd can show up on this section of the chart. (But it won't be as pronounced.)

There were no P-waves or S-waves recorded, as there would have been had it been a real earthquake, so there is no way to assign it a number along any known scale to explain just how strong it may have been. This means that there is no way to calculate it's perceived strength on the Richter scale.

As to why this hasn't been recorded in subsequent games with an extremely significant noise level, the biggest part of this lies in the games itself that night in 1988.

Auburn led the game 3-0, and then 6-0 on the strength of two field goals. They has been unable to get into our endzone all night and the score was close enough, and the team was good enough that year to keep everyone riveted in place to see if the Bayou Bengals could pull off an upset win against Auburn.

The whole game was pretty loud as far as crowd noise goes, but it was the fact that one, single, separate event in time would cause 85,000+ people to jump for joy in the stands as Hodson connected with Fuller in the north endzone in front of a portion of the LSU student section with a minute and forty-some seconds left in the game.

For that brief instant, as LSU tied, and then went ahead of Auburn on the PAT, the Tiger faithful erupted like so many 16-inch main guns firing simultaneously from all turrets of a WWII battleship!

It wasn't a sustained roar like at so many other games, but was more of a sonic shockwave that literally shook the earth in the vicinity of the LSU campus.

Due to the shallow nature of this particular type of wave, and the nature of the soil types found in south Louisiana, I doubt very seriously that there would have been any other seismic monitoring stations that would have registered this event.

I have no doubt that similar occurrences have taken place near other stadiums, but either there were no nearby seismic monitors, or the significance of the seismic anomaly in relation to the sporting event went unnoticed.

I still have my old, yellowed out, original copy of the Daily Reveille that came out at the start of the following week, and every year, during this point of the football season, I bring it out of its hiding place in a box in the closet and re-read the article as tears of joy and reminiscence fill my eyes and threaten to run down my face.

Like Whiteshadeaux and many others on this board,I was there and contributed to the noise and tremors as I leapt for joy. Those years were good years to be a student at The Ole War Skule. (But then, isn't every year a good year to be a Tiger?) I envy you old farts who were there for the '72 game with the Jones to Davis pass against Ole Miss.

By P-and S-waves, I mean primary and secondary waves that would travel deep in the earth. There were quite obviously PRIMARY SURFACE waves.

Sorry for the confusion. Your geol prof wouldn't steer you wrong. (BTW, does Dr Roch still teach geology at LSU? I loved his classes. Of course, that was twenty-five years ago.)

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By P-and S-waves, I mean primary and secondary waves that would travel deep in the earth.

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No, I understand the difference between P and S waves and the time between them is used to calculate distance since they travel at a fixed speed through a given material.

I'm saying, about a month ago, he said that it measured roughly around a 3.(something) and also said it was comparable to the earthquake that hit the BR area last year.

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Your geol prof wouldn't steer you wrong.

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I don't think he would either.

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(BTW, does Dr Roch still teach geology at LSU? I loved his classes. Of course, that was twenty-five years ago.)

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Not sure. I'm just taking intro right now but am thinking about taking more geol classes for my electives. Falls in line with my love for physics and pursing a CE major.