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Random Geek Toy Encounter
Jan. 21st, 2006 11:57 amThat's one of the cool things about marrying an astronomer, lots of cool toys up there! Anyway, Russet and I had lunch at a local sandwich shop yesterday before she headed off to work. She had bills to pay and was one envelope short, so we walked over to the post office. In the corner of the post office was a guy working with an interesting looking gadget that set on the floor.
It stood maybe a foot tall, and was about 8x12" from the top. It had surprisingly few controls, from the frequency that the guy was refering to a Palm Pilot that was tethered to it, it was obvious that the Palm was both controlling and displaying the instrument. So I started talking to the guy and rapidly learn that the box on the ground is a GRAVITY METER. He was going around town measuring gravity.
We had an interesting discussion, he had no problem talking to curious strangers. He had a partner with a larger unit taking readings at a gas station about 50 yards away, that unit required a truck battery for power. These puppies have a spring in them and I guess they measure the deflection of that spring. It's sensitive enough to detect an earthquake on the far side of the world or a person walking next to it.
The obvious question is WHY. Well, it turns out that you use these things to try and find oil deposits. I have no idea what the correlation between gravity and oil deposits is, but that's what this guy was saying. They weren't looking for oil in the Sacramento Mountains, they were just trying to establish baselines for new equipment that they'd just received. And apparently the readings were not even close to previous readings for the area, so they've got some work ahead of them reconciling the two.
It was pretty cool.
It stood maybe a foot tall, and was about 8x12" from the top. It had surprisingly few controls, from the frequency that the guy was refering to a Palm Pilot that was tethered to it, it was obvious that the Palm was both controlling and displaying the instrument. So I started talking to the guy and rapidly learn that the box on the ground is a GRAVITY METER. He was going around town measuring gravity.
We had an interesting discussion, he had no problem talking to curious strangers. He had a partner with a larger unit taking readings at a gas station about 50 yards away, that unit required a truck battery for power. These puppies have a spring in them and I guess they measure the deflection of that spring. It's sensitive enough to detect an earthquake on the far side of the world or a person walking next to it.
The obvious question is WHY. Well, it turns out that you use these things to try and find oil deposits. I have no idea what the correlation between gravity and oil deposits is, but that's what this guy was saying. They weren't looking for oil in the Sacramento Mountains, they were just trying to establish baselines for new equipment that they'd just received. And apparently the readings were not even close to previous readings for the area, so they've got some work ahead of them reconciling the two.
It was pretty cool.
