Tests in the Tower
With the help of James Wookey and Anna Horleston a seismometer has been set up in the Wills Tower so we can record what seismic or urban activity is vibrating and shaking the bell in the 215 feet tall Wills Tower.
‘A Day In The Life Of Great George ’ could be shown, we thought, with recordings of the seismic activity affecting the bell in the Tower, the sounds heard and recorded in the tower and images could show this.
With the data from the seismometer we could see clearly the vibration of the chimes of the bell affecting the seismometer.
The waveform image showed the chiming of the bell, but in addition to this we could see there were other vibrations. We thought they might be vibrations of the wind on the tower and perhaps from the impact of the urban traffic up Park Street showing up on the image of the waveform.
Can we see evidence of vibration from other continents?
We are looking to see if seismic activity across the globe would show up in the bell tower seismometer recordings. We have chosen a date and time when there was seismic activity of 6.4 on the Richter Scale – in the sea near Indonesia 25th March 2018.
We are now looking at the data from the seismometer in the tower and comparing it with data picked up in the workshop seismometers down stairs. The seismometers in the workshop I’m told show up more clearly the long distance seismological events. Taking the date and time of the events near Indonesia on the 25th March, we can compare read outs from the tower seismometer and the workshop seismometer to check if the vibration is evident in the tower wave form – i.e. is the seismic activity from afar affecting the tower and bell and can we see it?
We also set up a camera – a Go-pro – to see what it’s like to experience time passing through the day. Our first tests were every 30 seconds. Next we will try a continuous video and sound recording.
Students from the university working with Alison Rust have measured the reach and strength of the bells’ low frequency acoustic sound waves. More to come on that ….
