Ucla Seismic Info

There's Been A Seismic Shift In College Football Since Last Season

Told those schools were no longer in those leagues, he quipped, "Whoa, next you'll tell me Texas joined the Pac-10."

No, but almost.

College football avoided (for now) the "Big Bang" cosmic conference shift, yet the Big Ten alone underwent so much realignment it could have split into the "Sciatica" and "Lower Lumbar" divisions.

Larry Scott, had thy will been done, you would have been commissioner of the soon-to-be Pac-16, the nation's first "super conference." Six Big 12 schools, including Texas and Oklahoma, would have been among the 16.

Scott's grand maneuver failed but caused a chain reaction that would have made Sir Isaac Newton proud.

You can't begin to tell this year's college football story until you know where all the mascots landed.

The Pac-10 didn't get Texas but added Colorado and Utah and is now the Pac-12. The league split into divisions and will play a Dec. 2 championship game in the home stadium of the highest-seeded finisher.

USC and UCLA are in the South but still will play annually against Stanford and California, now in the North.

It's going to be different. New member Utah got a huge housewarming gift by missing Stanford and Oregon on the 2011 schedule. Cal and Colorado are now conference mates but must play a "nonleague" game this year as part of a previously arranged contract.

The Big Ten, which used to have 11 teams, now has 12. It adds Nebraska, which bolted the Big 12, which went from 12 teams to 10, having also lost Colorado.

The Big Ten named its divisions "Legends" and "Leaders" before Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who was on the "Leaders" side, was forced to resign in disgrace.

The Pac-12, which used to play a round robin schedule without a title game, has divided into six-team divisions. The Big 12, which used to have six-team divisions and play a title game, has switched to the round robin format.

Brigham Young, formerly of the Mountain West, will go independent in football and ship its other sports to the West Coast Conference.

And this, believe it or not, is only the beginning.

Next year, Texas Christian will join the Big East and three more WAC teams — Hawaii, Nevada and Fresno State — will move to the Mountain West.

UCLA Engineering Plans Earthquake Shake Akin to Northridge for ...

. And if the building architects find the shuddering eerily reminiscent of 1994's Northridge temblor, that's because the movements from this simulated quake will be exactly the same as that frightening natural disaster.

During the 2006 Pacific Southwest Regional Conference of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), students will have the chance to test out their scale-model dormitory buildings against the Northridge quake — as replicated by the recently completed "Shake Lab" at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The annual student conference, which runs from March 30 to April 1, is being hosted by UCLA Engineering this year and will bring nearly 500 civil engineering undergraduates from Southern California, , all have student teams competing in the quake competition.

This year's seismic design challenge is to build a three-story, scale-model wood dormitory that meets specific land size and cost requirements. All of the models will be tested on the shake table with ground motions recorded during medium and large earthquakes — with the large one this year mirroring the Northridge quake. The winning building will be the one that satisfies the pre-set design criteria, falls within cost parameters and emerges with the least amount of damage after the "big one" hits.

Teams from all of the universities have been preparing for the challenge since fall 2005. The students have had four months to complete their designs, from conception to execution.

"I've been involved in ASCE since my sophomore year, and I think it's really valuable to be part of the organization," said Jerry Lee, a senior at UCLA Engineering and co-chair of the school's seismic design event team. "The conference events give you practical experience. You learn these things in class, but a lot of it doesn't click until you really try to build something."

"We're training future civil engineers to understand how buildings react in an earthquake, and in the process, the students also are having fun working with their peers," said Jonathan Stewart, UCLA civil and environmental engineering professor and adviser for the student chapter of ASCE, which is organizing the event.

The National Science Foundation-funded George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES, sponsors operation of the NEES@UCLA earthquake simulation facility. NEES was created to promote better understanding of earthquakes and their effects, and is a shared national network of 15 experimental facilities. Collaborative resources shared by the sites aim to promote new discoveries in the ways buildings, bridges, utility systems, coastal regions and natural materials perform during seismic events.

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