Earthquakes and Tsunamis

Ms. Patel, an Earth Science teacher is working to plan a lesson to help students understand the causes and effects of the 2013 tsunami in Japan, the 2008 earthquake in China, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The unit question from the perspective of the science teacher is, “How do earthquakes tell us a story about what is happening inside the earth and on the surface?”

The teacher stimulates students’ interest by showing them video from a film called “The Violent Earth,” containing striking images of the Indonesian Tsunami and other earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanoes.

Ms. Patel brainstorms with students asking them what happens during earthquakes or the locations of earthquakes they have heard about. She uses Google Earth to find the places that students mention. She asks them if they see any patterns in the location of these earthquakes. Then she loads an overlay of Google Earth, mapping all the earthquakes that have happened since 1970.

The images are striking showing a series of white dots in lines along the west coast of North and South America and through Africa, Asia, and oceans around the world. The students are quick to point out the lines but have few ideas about what they mean. After discussing volcanoes, Ms. Patel asks half of the students to use their laptops to locate as many volcanoes as possible and the other half to locate mountain ranges on every continent. As they find these features, students mark them on a map of the world using a collaborative mapping tool called Google My Maps. Each student can annotate the same map from their own computer marking each volcano with a pin and each mountain range with a line. They can add pictures or videos of volcanoes and mountains to annotate the map. When they are finished they compare their map of volcanoes and mountain ranges with that of the world’s earthquakes and notice the similarities in the locations.

Ms. Patel uses this discovery as an opportunity to explain the theory of plate tectonics. She shows animations and videos explaining the different kinds of faults and the damage that they cause.

Resources used in this scenario:
The Violent Earth: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/violent_earth/
YouTube videos: Why is Haiti prone to earthquakes? Why didn’t the Haiti earthquake cause a Tsunami? Videos from the Japanese Tsunami.


Resources on plate tectonics: http://msteacher.org/epubs/science/science1/science.aspx
How earthquakes work: http://science.howstuffworks.com/earthquake.htm
Animations for plate tectonics: HERE

Tools used in this scenario:
Google My Maps: http://maps.google.com/
Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/
Earthquake monitoring tool for Google Earth: HERE

Last modified: Tuesday, May 13, 2014, 8:47 PM