Hello! I can’t believe we’re already on Week 3 of our projects – it really feels like it’s been no time at all. When I wrote my last blog, I was working on creating geographic maps in MATLAB, and then plotting specific data on those maps. Since then, I’ve managed to create a map of Costa Rica and learned how to plot locations, as well as how to draw a line connecting two particular co-ordinates. (This latter part is important because it will come in handy when making maps of various seismic stations in reference to the epicenter of an earthquake.) Here’s an example:
Beyond this map, I’ve also been able to get MATLAB to read a text file containing important earthquake data into a cell array, which will be useful to actually using that data. Dr. Levin also wrote code in MATLAB that parses through a particularly tricky file of data, so by next week’s blog I might have some really interesting plots to share with you all.
One thing that’s been absolutely great about my project is the ability to work on data that’s already been collected remotely, because it means I don’t have to rely on in-person work (which, for obvious reasons, is a little hard to come by right now). If I were in Costa Rica this summer, I’d probably be working with the seismic stations set up around the country, which probably would have helped gain a better insight into the technology of earthquake measurements; however, the project I’m working on in place of the planned fieldwork has also been fulfilling – and to be quite honest, a great way to get practical familiarity with MATLAB, which is important as a future engineer. There is, though, the possibility of travelling to Costa Rica for the purpose of doing fieldwork sometime in the future, which I’d definitely welcome. To whatever the future may hold!