What difference would it make if we could give a population a three-day warning of an impending earthquake? Evacuations could occur, resources made ready, and safety measures but in place. But how would we make such a forecast? That was the subject of the LiveChat presented by Dr. Friedemann Freund of the Ames Research Center in California to 155 memebrs of the INSPIRE Online Learning Community. Dr. Freund told of an interesting property of crystals he has discovered where a compressive force on a rock could generate an electrical current. This current may effect the ionosphere, produce ultra-low frequency waves and may effect the health of humans and animals. Dr. Freund’s presentation took up most of the hour, so not a lot of questions were answered, but he agreed to answer them off line so watch the Discussion Board for those answers!
Speaking of questions and answers: Our goal with the LiveChat is to connect our OLC members to NASA subject matter experts, and the Q & A is a great way to do this. We plan to have 20 – 25 minutes set aside for Q & A, allowing for 25 – 30 questions. Typically, we’ve had an accumulated 60 hands raised at the end of the chat, so we’ve tried to solve this by asking our presenters to answer questions offline. When the answers are returned they are posted in the LiveChat thread on the Discussion Board. I will change the thread title by adding “w/ Q&A” to notify you when they are posted.
Now, here is how the Q & A works: When the chat is over, I will ask for questions. At that time, you may raise your virtual hand (any hands raised before that time will be lowered) to queue up for a question. Type your question into the text box in the Chat window but DO NOT SEND! I will only respond to the question I called for and ask that question to our speaker. Everything else will be ignored. Imagine a class where each student is shouting out a question at the same time; this only produces chaos and no one gets any answers. Sometimes, you hit send by mistake, and if I see you are queued up I note where it is and can come back to it. No worries. But several students are sending in questions without raising hands or waiting for their turn, creating a very confusing situation as the question I may be reading gets pushed up out of the window. I ask for your patience and understanding, and for you to be polite to our presenter by following this simple rule: Send your question only when called. Thank you!
Two LiveChats next week: our featured NASA Center is the Marshall Space Flight Center, and Scott Anderson from the Digital Learning Network will talk about the center at 4pm CT on Tuesday Nov. 1, and then our regular Thursday chat at 8pm CT with Sten Odenwald from Goddard Space Flight Center talking about Space Weather. Sign up now on the Discussion Board!
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