Travelling to Oklahoma for 10 weeks instead of starting year 8 at secondary school sounds like a dream come true. However if the reason is to receive ground-breaking proton beam therapy for a recently discovered tumour it starts to look like a lot less fun. Also missing school for months at this age can be a real problem for your education so Ben's parents started asking around for potential educational activities to keep him thinking and provide some engaging distractions from the therapy sessions.
Earthquakes and seismology might not seem like the obvious solution, however Ben is from Oakham in Rutland, which due to a spate of 9 earthquakes in 2014-15 earned the dubious title of "earthquake capital of Britain"
Unfortunately the earthquakes (maximum magnitude 3.8) were missed by Ben who was either asleep or on holiday when they all happened, so he was quite excited to learn that Oklahoma had since 2009 become the "earthquake capital of America"
So Ben agreed to become a "roving schoolboy seismologist" for the
UK school seismology project, (an educational outreach project run by the British Geological Survey) and to monitor any unusual seismic activity going on in Oklahoma during his stay.
