Earthquakes

Read the information from Science Trek together in class. Then read the book Earthquakes by Franklyn M. Branley and compare the details in both sources.

Write a 3 – 4 sentence piece explaining what causes earthquakes.

Read on your own about liquefaction, tsunamis or types of faults. Create a presentation using poetry, music or a skit to share about the topic with your class.

Go to this USGS site and graph the earthquakes that happened in the last hour. Teachers: be aware that the time is listed in military time including seconds. Students will need help determining an hour's duration.

Research the speed of a particular tsunami and create a map showing how far the wave reached at varying time intervals. This video may be of help. 

Research earthquake data and create a data display. Consider earthquakes over a given Richter measure, earthquakes for a period of time, earthquakes in a given region, etc.

Examples of events and timescales could include volcanic explosions and earthquakes, which happen quickly, and erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.

A variety of hazards result from natural processes (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions). Hazards cannot be eliminated, but their impacts can be reduced. Examples of solutions could include designing an earthquake resistant building. Testing a solution involves investigating how well it performs under a range of likely conditions.

The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns. Most earthquakes and volcanoes occur in bands that are often along the boundaries between continents and oceans. Major mountain chains form inside continents or near their edges. Maps can help locate the different land and water feature areas of Earth.

Maps can include topographic maps of Earth's land and ocean floor, as well as maps of the locations of mountains, continental boundaries, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth forces, such as earthquakes.

Mapping the history of natural hazards in a region, combined with an understanding of related geologic forces can help forecast the locations and likelihoods of future events.

Emphasis is on how some natural hazards, such as volcanic eruptions and severe weather, are preceded by phenomena that allow for reliable predictions, but others, such as earthquakes, occur suddenly and with no notice, and thus are not yet predictable. Examples of natural hazards can be taken from interior processes (such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), surface processes (such as mass wasting and tsunamis), or severe weather events (such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods). Examples of data can include the locations, magnitudes, and frequencies of the natural hazards. Examples of technologies can be global or local.

Tectonic processes continually generate new ocean sea floor at ridges and destroy old sea floor at trenches.
Maps of ancient land and water patterns, based on investigations of rocks and fossils, make clear how Earth's plates have moved great distances, collided, and spread apart. Examples of data include similarities of rock and fossil types on different continents, the shapes of the continents, and the locations of ocean structures.

The planet's systems interact over scales that range from microscopic to global in size, and they operate over fractions of a second to billions of years. These interactions have shaped Earth's history and will determine its future.

Emphasis is on how processes change Earth's surface at time and spatial scales that can be large (such as slow plate motions or the uplift of mountain ranges), or small (such as rapid landslides), and how many geoscience processes (such as earthquakes and volcanoes) usually behave gradually but are punctuated by catastrophic events.