Here is a scratch project we worked on that simulates a earthquake.http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/14111256/

          The Great San Francisco Earthquake

 The Great San Francisco Earthquake is a television show on the San Francisco 1906 Earthquake. It mostly explained the damage from the fire, that was a result of the earthquake, caused to the city and it's population. Most of the neighborhoods were severely damaged, some even completely destroyed. The main offense in this event was not the earthquake, it was the rapidly spreading fire that turned many people homeless and worried for lost relatives or friends. The government sent soldiers in on the scene as well as the fire department. Since there was no water the firemen were not much help. The soldiers actually killed people who went past a quickly moving line of safety. They also tried to make a fire-block using dynamite which just destroyed the interior of building making it easier to destroy parts of the city. A soldier said that he saw three people die because of the fire. One of the survivors explained  that he was lucky because he found his mother's sewing machine. This television show also explained that these people recovered very quickly and rebuilt the city in three years. The carpenters and iron workers now had the hard job of rebuilding the building and shops. They made the city in to the same joyful place that it was before the quake. The the people meanwhile were stuck waiting in line the entire day to get food and water. if you were found wandering they would make you dig holes in the roads for new buildings in progress. The lesson learned is that earthquakes can cause other kinds of disasters, in this case a fire. Also the actual earthquake may not be the major disaster but the resulting causes will. The people also thought of very bad ways that it would be possible to stop the fire. 

Problem Description by Dylan

People stuck in a building during earthquake. How can we get emergency supplies to them?

1. In the recent earthquake in the Philippines (7.2 magnitude on Oct 15, 2013) the people stuck in the buildings needed enough food, water, and medicine to last until the rescue teams could evacuate them.
2. There were several reasons why it was hard for the rescue teams to get to them because they needed to find them,
3. The roads and bridges were blocked or too narrow,
4. The weather was bad,
5. There were many aftershocks,
6. Many places didn’t have power
7. They didn’t have enough equipment that was strong enough to move/ cut through heavy objects and that did not require a separate electricity source.

Souces:

1. http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/10/18/1246550/rescuers-struggle-find-bohol-quake-victims
2. http://www.philstar.com/nation/2013/11/02/1251946/bohol-quake-victims-glad-miners-came-search-rescue-efforts

3. Rescue operations for Cebu, Bohol quake victims - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PkaWC0vyA‎

Earthquake Explanation

Indoor helicopter tech

by Enoch

model	price	size	potential use	picture
quadricopter	$299	16.5CM by 18.5CM	1) wildfire ;-) 2) AS a source of solar energy (NG Solar panels) 3) and a wind generator (There is even a patent on it) Heard about this in google news 4) Herding cattle (in the open pilot thread I think this is mentioned) 5) ultralite manned aircraft 6) pipeline inspection 7) realestate 8) Cell tower inspections 9) The obvious search and rescue, military, fun. AP/AV Franco	*
ETOU 9985 2-Channel Infrared Remote Control Flying Robot with Gyroscope	$39.99		Infrared remote control Supports two bands to control two flight Supports light and sound effects Suitable for indoor use Can be charged via the remote control	*
ROBOTIC UFO 3-Channel I/R Flying Ball RC Helicopter with Gyro	$39.39		It can hover like a helicopter. It can maneuver around any interior room with amazing precision and agility. If it contacts any other object, it simply bounces off and just keeps on flying!	*

Improving old ways to rescue people



            improving old ideas on how to rescue people from a broken building

             One of the ways people search for other people inside a broken building is using quads. Quad copters are flying devices that have four propellers. There are good benefits to these devices but if we want to improve it we need to focus on the bad parts. A major problem is that this device has no programing of the building so it has to navigate itself. So how do we fix it? Some people say you can control it with a remote and have a camera on it. While this is true many things could go wrong. If you use a remote and camera you will have a limited amount of view so you will never know when   you can hit the ceiling,or the wall, or any other rubble. If you put to many camera on the quad would become to heavy to fly. There are many other ways like this one.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQ  If you watched the following show you would know that you can use markers and cameras to help you but a collapsed building wouldn't have 10 cameras looking for markers. So how do we fix this? One idea is that it uses ultrasonic which are robot eyes. They can slowly compute what to do and then they go forward. Another way we can fix this is by making it shock absorbent. This means it will be protected so when it hits something it will do little or no damage. Another problem is a quad can only carry a limited amount of weight. There are easy ways to fix this but it means sacrificing another thing. You can have multiple propellers to gain more lift but you will risk losing power quicker. These are some of the most troubling problems with quads.

 

Our Lego Project

Life-Saving Robots

by Dennis, Bill, Lucca, Dylan, and Enoch
Our project is going to be about life-saving robots that will be placed in the building so that if an earthquake strikes they can locate people and maybe even bring supplies. The robots could also open up communication with relief forces in order to find and save the buried people. Also, they would be in the building to start with so that there would be no problem getting in. Also there would be multiple robots per building because one might be damaged not all would necessarily be. The robots would preferably be flying, not land transported creations because if the building has multiple floors the elevator or stairs might be broken so the robots could fly up to bring supplies to people. It would also be good so that if any people are unable to get survival supplies these robots will bring them what they need. The robot should be able to open up contact with other humans in case they are in great medical need or can’t get out of a damaged building. Also, this would prevent human life being lost trying to save the people if the building was unstable or unbalanced, as if the building fell over or the ceiling collapsed. There would be multiple types of robots, one to help the people, the second to secure the building from further damage.