Mathematics is Focus of Two Grants CAMPUS CURRENT
Physics Lessons from the Japanese Quake FACULTY EXPERTS DISCUSS EARTHQUAKE AND NUCLEAR CRISIS
“When the 9.8 Tohoku-Oki earthquake struck off Japan’s north- eastern coast on March 11, the seismology lab at HMC recorded the movement. The ground in Claremont moved about a centi- meter,” physics Professor Greg Lyzenga told an attentive crowd gathered March 25 in Galileo-McAlister Hall. Like Japan, Southern California resides along the seismically
active Pacific Rim of Fire, but is characterized by a different type of plate movement, he said. California’s southern half exists atop a strike-slip boundary, where the North American and Pacific plates grind laterally past one another. The plate geometry near Japan, however, reveals not two but four plates converging. The Philippines and Pacific plates move past one another as they shift northwest toward Japan and then slip under the Eurasian and North American plates. “It’s this stick-slip boundary that is responsible for the very large earth- quakes characterizing Japan,” Lyzenga said. This difference in plate configuration combined with historic
data—the largest quake recorded in the region was an 8.0 in 1857—suggest Southern California has little risk of a Tohoku- Oki-sized temblor, he said. Unlike the Fukushima Daiichi nu- clear reactor crisis that followed the quake, which could happen anywhere, said physics Professor Peter Saeta. Although Japanese crews inserted control rods to stop the nu-
clear reaction, the rods themselves still contain fission fragments that generate heat, he said. When the zirconium in the cladding of the fuel rods reaches about 440 degrees Fahrenheit, a reaction occurs with the surrounding water producing hydrogen, which can, and did, cause explosions at the power plant. “So one of the things that they’re learning is that they have to have a means of venting that hydrogen,” he said. Saeta hopes the disaster will promote serious conversation about the storage of nuclear waste in the United States. A video of the talk can be found at
www.youtube.com/ watch?v=brA-ixA2ViA.
High-flying Celebration Community members gathered Feb. 19 for the 90th birthday of Iris Critchell, instructor of aeronautics emerita, who turned 90. In attendance were over 100 people, including family, many alumni, faculty and friends, who shared personal stories about Iris and her husband, Howard (“Critch”). Included among the guests were Bates Aeronautics Program alumni whom Iris and Critch had taught to fly (the Bates Program ran from 1962 until 1990). Iris’s lifetime achievements include swimming in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, winning the 1957 Powder Puff Derby (a transcontinental race performed by women pilots), being inducted into the National Flight Instructors Hall of Fame in 2000 and receiving a Congressional Gold Medal in 2010 along with fellow members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
College News
Iris and Howard Critchell
Iris celebrates her 90th birthday on campus with friends and family.
SPRING 2011 Har vey Mudd College
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KEVIN MAPP
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