fairfolio
Saved Projects

Relationship between Sunspot Number and the Geomagnetic Field: A Two Year Study

CSEF · 2007 Earth & Planetary Sciences

Irene Hsu · Portola (Gaspar de) Middle School, Tarzana, Los Angeles County

Overview

Objectives/Goals This study examined the possible correlation between sunspot number and the deflection component of the Earth's magnetic field. In the first year, sunspot measurements were taken with a Sunspotter daily, and magnetometer measurements were taken with a simple bar magnet (soda bottle) magnetometer at 10:00pm nightly for two months. In the second year, sunspot measurements were obtained online, and magnetometer measurements were taken first with a soda bottle magnetometer, and then a compass detector magnetometer for two months. After comparison of the final data, it was found that the higher the sunspot number, the stronger the perturbation in the Earth's magnetic field, and vice versa. This suggests that there is a positive association between sunspot number and the deflection component of the geomagnetic field.

Summary statement

This study examined the possible correlation between sunspot number and the deflection component of the Earth's magnetic field.

Help received

Used lab equipment at the UCLA Space Physics Lab; Kathryn Rowe helped build compass detector magnetometer; father helped build soda bottle magnetometer; Sunspotter was borrowed from Dr. Mark Moldwin

Competition history

  • CSEF 2007 Earth & Planetary Sciences · Entry J0713

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google