physics

Silver Alert

Silver Alert is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Silver Alert rather than just read about it. In short: Silver Alert is a public notification system in the United States to broadcast information about missing persons – especially senior citizens with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or other mental disabilities – in order to aid in locating them. Silver Alerts use a wide array of media outlets – such as commercial radio stations, television stations, and cable television – to broadcast information about missing persons.

Key takeaways

Silver Alert belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Silver Alert to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Silver Alert from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Silver Alert is a public notification system in the United States to broadcast information about missing persons – especially senior citizens with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or other mental disabilities – in order to aid in locating them. Silver Alerts use a wide array of media outlets – such as commercial radio stations, television stations, and cable television – to broadcast information about missing persons. In some states (specifically Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, North Dakota, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Wisconsin), Silver Alerts also use variable-message signs on roadways to alert motorists to be on the lookout for missing seniors. In cases in which a missing person is believed to be missing on foot, Silver Alerts have used Reverse 911 or other emergency notification systems to notify nearby residents of the neighborhood surrounding the missing person's last known location. Silver Alerts can also be used for children who are missing without being in danger or abducted. Supporters of Silver Alert point to the United States' growing elderly population as a reason for new programs to locate missing seniors. Approximately 60% of dementia sufferers will wander off at least once. However, a 2012 review of research into missing-senior programs found that Silver Alert had not been evaluated to determine whether it was effective in returning those people to safety, or even whether wandering was a severe enough problem to merit expending resources to address it. It characterized Silver Alert's rate of facilitating returns of missing people as "[i]mpossible to tell", because the statistical records are distributed among state agencies which do not necessarily publicize them. The researchers also criticized it and similar programs for prioritizing safety over civil rights such as autonomy, and noted that broadcasting a missing person's identity might put them at risk for exploitation (such as identity theft).

History In December 2005, Oklahoma state Representative Fred Perry (R-Tulsa) announced his intention to introduce an "AMBER Alert for seniors", which he dubbed "Silver Alert." In March 2006, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed H.R. 1075, a resolution calling for a Silver Alert system to find missing seniors. In response to this non-binding resolution, the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety added Silver Alert notifications to the statewide alerts sent to law enforcement agencies and the media for rapid distribution. In April 2009, Governor Brad Henry signed legislation permanently establishing the Silver Alert program. In Georgia, public efforts to locate missing seniors increased following the April 2004 disappearance of Mattie Moore, a 68-year-old Atlanta resident with Alzheimer's disease. Eight months after Moore's disappearance, her body was found 500 yards (460 m) from her home. The City of Atlanta created "Mattie's Call" to coordinate and support Metro Atlanta law enforcement, emergency management and broadcasters to issue an urgent bulletin in missing persons cases involving persons with Alzheimer's disease, dementia and other mental disabilities. Legislation to create a statewide Mattie's Call program was enacted in April 2006. In Florida, local and state government officials worked together to develop a pilot Silver Alert program following the case of an 86-year-old person who drove away from her assisted-living facility on February 26, 2008, and was found dead a week later, 10 miles (16 km) away in the Intracoastal Waterway near a boat ramp and her submerged car.

National growth Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have Silver Alert or similar programs targeting missing seniors. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have missing persons recovery programs that are formally called "Silver Alert":

Additionally, nine states have programs to help locate missing seniors that are not officially called "Silver Alert" but contain criteria similar to existing Silver Alert programs:

Plus, ten states have missing-persons alert systems with broader criteria than conventional Silver Alert programs. These missing-person alerts apply to larger categories of endangered persons, or apply to all missing people, regardless of age or impairment:

Mattie's Call Mattie's Call is a law-enforcement-initiated public notification system used to locate missing elderly or otherwise disabled persons in Georgia. The system was established as part of House Bill 728 by the Georgia General Assembly in 2006 and is named in reference to 67-year-old Mattie Moore, an Alzheimer's disease patient who wandered away from her Atlanta home in 2004 and was found dead 8 months later in a wooded area 250 meters away. Mattie's Call is modeled after the AMBER Alert system used to locate missing or abducted children; it uses public-service announcements on radio stations, displays on publicly controlled signaling devices and transmissions to law-enforcement agencies in an attempt to raise awareness of and help the public locate the missing endangered person. To qualify for the issuing of a Mattie's Call alert, the following criteria must be met:

The missing person must be elderly or otherwise meet Georgia's definition of a disabled adult, which is an individual who is developmentally or cognitively impaired or suffer from dementia or other cognitive disabilities. A law enforcement agency verifies the person's disappearance and eliminates alternative explanations for their disappearance. The missing person is believed to be in immediate danger of serious injury or death. The missing person is listed in the database of the National Crime Information Center. There is enough information that exists regarding the missing person that can adequately assist the public in locating them. A law enforcement agency is to issue statewide broadcasts to other law enforcement and/or 911 centers in addition to contacting local media in regards to the missing person.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Silver Alert

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Silver Alert claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Silver Alert before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Silver Alert ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Silver Alert

In research: Silver Alert appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Silver Alert in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Silver Alert is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alzheimer's disease, Emergency communications in the United States, Emergency services in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Silver Alert outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Silver Alert in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Silver Alert means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Silver Alert out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Silver Alert in simple terms?

Why does Silver Alert matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Silver Alert?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Silver Alert.