Kathryn L. Henderson, Quest Science teacher at Veterans Memorial Middle School, received an AS-1 seismometer from IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) a few years ago. Since then, the seismometer has been up and running at Veterans Memorial Middle School. Last night's 8.9 earthquake off the coast of Honshu, Japan was recorded by the school's seismometer. The earthquake struck at 5:46 UTC (Universal Time) and its seismic waves reached VMMS approximately 12 minutes later.

Instead of recording the seismic waves on a rotating drum of paper as many seismographs do, the AS-1 sends its signal electronically to a computer. Above is a screenshot of the graph produced by the earthquake.