Ms. Katherine assigned a creative project to be completed over the holiday break that she hopes will be some fun: creating your own earthquake myth. It doesn't have to be written, you can record it, make a movie, draw a comic, whatever you would like as long as it is the equivalent of a page and a half of writing. If you need some inspiration, you can check out earthquake myths from history in the text for Lesson 10.
On the last day before our student-led conferences, we conducted an interesting investigation around earthquake waves. Here is the handout for it:
Investigation 11.1
We dripped water into a container to watch how the energy from the splash dispersed. This helped us conclude that the energy from an earthquake seems to go outward in every direction. While the water splash only went out in 2 dimensions, we inferred that the earthquake energy must go outward in 3 dimensions. Observations included that the wave seemed to get smaller the further away it got from the center, and it bounced off the walls and came back as well.
We then used an earthquake wave simulation spring (what non-scientists might mistakenly call a "Slinky") to check out the two major types of waves that come from an earthquake event: P-waves and S-waves. We timed the waves and found in most cases that the P-waves were faster than the S-waves. We then imagined what would happen to a house on the surface above an earthquake when hit by both types of waves.
The "P" in P-wave stands for primary, and the "S" in S-wave stands for secondary. This is due to the fact that since the P-wave is faster, it is the first wave that we would feel from an earthquake, and since the S-wave is slower, it is the second to be felt. While these are the scientific names for the waves, we use "push-and-pull" and "side-to-side" to easily remember how each wave moves.
Here is a video of the part of the investigation with the springs. I have included data so that if you missed doing the investigation in class, you can get a worksheet and do it with the YouTube video.
Investigation 11.1: Testing the Motion of Waves
The subject of the later part of this chapter – about building earthquake-resistant buildings – will be revisited later. For now, we will continue to focus on waves when we get back from our break!
