High Society

SAS links professional scientists with amateurs interested in helping with research projects, provides advice and assistance to amateur investigators, and publishes a magazine with experimental how-to advice.

Seismology and weather observation are the focus of the largest numbers of SAS members. Carlson attributes this partly to the universal fascination that these topics hold and partly to the existence of a number of other organizations that already exist for people with other interests, like the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, for birders, and the Association of Variable Star Observers, which works with astronomers.

But SAS's projects span all disciplines, from archeology to astronomy.

In one archeological project, the organization has linked several hundred amateurs with a team of professional archeologists excavating in the San Diego area. In another project, members measured muon flux--particles produced in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays collide with molecules in the air--with Forrest Mims III, the legendary author of the Radio Shack Mini Notebooks electronics series.

Carlson is currently working with members on a project suggested by an SAS participant to use a sturdy kite attached to a long cable in order to measure physical data about tornadoes. Current tornado measurements are made from trucks that are driven into the prone areas, but are often unable limited because the trucks' positioning is not flexible enough.

Many of the society's projects are reported in its quarterly journal, which until recently was edited by a superintendent in the Tuscon, Ariz. fire department.

Only the best columns are reserved for the 1,200 words Carlson gets every month in Scientific American.