SID Student Work
Research Reports
Leandra Merola, a high school student at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York USA,
undertook a three-month research project to study the sunrise and sunset
signatures collected by her SID monitor. Her teacher was Richard Kurtz and
she was supported by mentors Nick Gross, of the Center for Integrated Space-weather
Modeling; Don Rice, Center for Atmospheric and Space Sciences, Utah State University;
and Miriam Forman, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Ms. Merola defined her
own project, set up the SID monitor, captured data for several months, and undertook analyses
of how solar-induced changes to the ionosphere affected the sunrise and sunset signatures of
VLF waves propagating through the ionosphere. Her project was entered in the prestigious
Intel Science Talent Search competition, "America's oldest and most highly regarded
pre-college science competition -- often referred to as the junior Nobel Prize!
Her work was also selected to be presented at the Regional Round of the Junior
Science and Humanities Symposium, a
highly-competitive gathering where she won third place out of 120 students!
Sophie Murray, an astrophysics senior at Dublin College, Ireland,
worked with her professor Peter Gallagher to study data from their
AWESOME monitor.
She analyzed data for evidence of lightning strikes, called sferics,
and solar activity. Her project also included an analysis of the sunrise/sunset
effects from her data. She says she enjoyed her final year project on
AWESOME so much that she intends to go into that field of research!
Sample Sunrise/Sunset Activity Sheets
Pre-activity Survey
Data Analysis Sheet
Pre-activity Survey
Data Analysis Sheet