Seismic water feature

You don't need to go far to watch the ocean waves. The water feature of the fountain at the seaside resort of Enge in Zurich shows how the waves of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean or the Baltic Sea are behaving, in real time. At least, this is the signal most frequently transmitted to the fountain's control system by the Swiss Seismological Service's seismic station at ETH Zurich in Degenried, near the Dolder. Roughly once a week, the dynamics of the fountain change, whenever a major earthquake occurs somewhere in the world. With a bit of luck you might even see smaller-scale Swiss earthquakes.

Although Switzerland's seismic network, comprising over 200 stations, is designed to record earthquakes, it can actually do much more. In addition to capturing the movements of ocean waves, the highly sensitive measuring devices detect the sounds emanating from forests, the noise made by flowing traffic and explosions in quarries. The Swiss Seismological Service (SED) only systematically analyses recorded seismic data after earthquakes and explosions. The Aquaretum, the fountain in Lake Zurich, uses a small frequency range of the existing signal, which causes the harmonic motion of the fountain's jets of water.