Shake It Up6

Reflection:

What is our problem,and what have we done so far to help solve it?

Tweet:

How is analyzing geological risks important to society?

What is the purpose of testing building structures on a surface that simulates the magnitude of a real earthquake?

VOCAB REFERENCE

ACME's List of Prime Locations:

Group 1: New Madrid, MO & Greenland

Group 2: Chile & Charleston, SC

Group 3: South Africa & Indonesia

Group 4: Hawaii & San Francisco, CA

Group 5: Anchorage, AK & Japan

Group 6: New Zealand & Dominican Republic

Group 7: Australia & Las Vegas, NV

REVIEW

Shake It Up Challenge

REVIEW

Where do earthquakes occur? How can these areas survive an earthquake? You and your team will become seismologists as you explore how earthquakes occur and the areas that are at risk for such geological catastrophes.

Challenge: ACME Theme Park has decided to go global! ACME is enlisting the aid of several scientists and engineers to determine prime locations around the world to place their theme parks. Soon, ACME will be distributing a list of locations that they feel would be excellent prospects for their park locations. Your job is to prepare a geological risk analysis for each location to determine the best areas for building the theme parks. WARNING: ACME is known for their CRAZY ideas and changing their minds in the mid-project...

Reflect:

Side note: volcanoes & Hawaii

What is the relationship between the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes?

Hotspot

Plate boundary vs. hotspot

Subduction at plate boundaries

Use what you found today to begin writing building codes for your theme park. Keep track what is working well in your model buildings.

• What shapes and sizes did you try that best survived the earthquakes? Why do you think so?
• Based on this, what do you want your building codes to say?
• How could you use your building codes to engineer real buildings that need to survive during an earthquake?

In many locations the hot molten magma from deep within the Earth rises up through the crust to reach the surface. This sometimes happens in the middle of plates. When a hot spot forms in the middle of a plate, it remains constant, as the plate continues to move over it. The result is that a trail of volcanoes is left behind, with older volcanoes moving away from the hot spot, and newer ones forming over top of the hot spot.

Essential Questions & Standards

NEWS FLASH!!!

ACME has to decided to make this challenge just a little more CHALLENGING...

EQ:

Are we able to describe the relationship between plate movements and earthquakes?

EL:

The student will describe the relationship

between plate movements and earthquakes.

Since you are such an intelligent group of seismologists and engineers, ACME would like you to put your GREAT minds to work! Instead of building their theme parks at a low-risk area, they want you to design and build a theme park at the locations that are most at risk for an earthquake! Your theme park will include buildings for restaurants, shopping, and restrooms, and most importantly a roller coaster with at least one large drop at the beginning, two "twin" hills, and a loopty loop. ACME will award the team with the tallest, "shake" resistant roller coaster with a "Shake It Up" surprise!

The buildings and roller coaster must be "shake" resistant in the case of a major earthquake. You will build a scale model (1:24).

Ask:

What is our problem?

How will we solve it?

Are there any limitations?

A "Shaky" Situation:

Since our buildings and roller coaster must be "shake" resistant in the case of a major earthquake, we have to develop our own building codes based on action research.

Action Research- engineer and test earthquake resistant building and structures for the roller coaster

We will model an earthquake using a "shake table". Your team will build your very own shake table and test different types of buildings, structures, and heights.

Imagine: Action Research

Building Skeletons

We will begin our action research by creating a building skeleton for our model buildings. A lot of buildings have wooden or metal skeletons inside the walls where we cannot see them. What is the job of the building skeletons?

A building skeleton is made of many small pieces. We are calling them building units. Your team can make several units to stack up and then use the shake table to figure out what shape and size skeleton is the strongest during an earthquake.

We will use index cards, coffee stirrers, and pipe cleaners to build our skeletons. Why do you think the coffee stirrers will go around the pipe cleaners? Arrange your building units to make building skeletons of different shapes and sizes (use the paperclips to attach building units together. Test SEVERAL ideas on the shake table and record your data/research. What will be your independent and dependent variables?

Reconstructing Haiti

Bell Work: 10/19/15

Use the informational text (library books) & the BrainPop video "Earthquakes" to fill out the graphic organizer at your table. The following words must be used in your graphic organizer: aftershock, epicenter, P waves, S waves, magnitude.