Monday, April 11, 2016

Shaking and surfing at Triton Day


UC San Diego is home to the world's largest outdoor shake table (or earthquake simulator) and to some serious surfing--including one of the nation's top college surfing teams and to a team that makes surfboards out of algae.

So this year, students admitted to UC San Diego got a chance to surf during a simulated earthquake, all while wearing an Occulus Rift virtual reality headset. Students heard a warning that a 9.9 earthquake has taken place and a giant tsunami is nearing the shore.

The experience was very popular. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“I thought I was going to fly off of it,” 17-year-old Jasmine Hassan said afterward. “I’ve never experienced virtual reality in that kind of immersive environment. I just think it shows how cutting-edge UCSD is, and you can see the way they apply the research that they do, it’s applicable to everything people are doing in modern-day life.”
Near the shakeboarding experience, students from the UCSD Seismic Outreach Program allowed campus visitors to "make their own earthquakes" by jumping on a mat equipped with an accelerometer, connected to a computer that made a building made of K'Nex shake on a small shake table.

“It’s definitely not your traditional info booth,” said Armen Azizian, a structural engineering graduate student told This Week @ UC San Diego. Azizian said he enjoyed sharing the technology with admitted students one-on-one, including those who aren’t necessarily going to be engineering majors.

UC San Diego Seismic Outreach teaches about seismic safety at Triton Day.

On Library Walk, many of the school's student organizations had come out to get prospective students excited about everything the campus has to offer.

SWE at Triton Day


The Triton Rocket Club showcased their robot.
AIChE, the chemical engineering student organization had a bean bag toss game.
SEDS at UC San Diego talked about 3D printing a rocket engine, a unique feat.

The Tau Beta Pi engineering honors society was out in force.
Engineers Withouth Borders at UC San Diego talked about their projects.


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