I N T R O D U C T I O N
2
In this unit students will move beyond their own
personal survival and that of their community, the
focus of Unit 1, to the big picture of earthquakes in
space and time. Since the Seismic Sleuths curriculum
is intended to supplement, and not to replace, your
school’s own syllabus, it sketches this big picture
without filling in all the basic earth science
background. Your preparation to teach these lessons
must begin with an assessment of your students’
readiness. If they have no familiarity with rocks and
minerals or with faulting and other processes that form
landscapes, you may need to provide a brief
introduction from the first few chapters of a high
school geology or earth science textbook.
Unit 2 begins with a hands-on activity that models
what happens when the stresses accumulated at a fault
are released in an earthquake. Using a box, a board,
sandpaper, and other simple materials, students apply
scientific method and basic math skills to measure
movement, calculate averages, and plot their
information on a graph.
The second lesson includes three activities and an
overview of what is now known about Earth’s ever-
shifting surface and its layered inner structure. In the
first activity, students will reproduce the magnetic
evidence for the migration of Earth’s poles in the
course of tectonic movement. In the second, they see
how this record is written in the rocks at mid-ocean
ridges. In the third, they create a map showing the
arrangement of the continents 120 million years ago,
and compare it with the map of the world today. As
students consider several alternative explanations for
tectonic plate movement, remind them that earth
science, like the Earth it studies, is constantly in
motion. Scientific knowledge moves forward through
questioning and the development of hypotheses into
theories; its goal is never to provide dogmatic answers.
The third lesson begins with an exercise in which
students contrast the small scope of historic time with
the vastness of geologic time. In the second activity,
Paleoseismology, they simulate the techniques
seismologists use to read the record of relatively recent
earthquakes.
The amount of damage an earthquake causes depends
on the strength and duration of the earthquake, on
population density, on methods of construction (to be
dealt with in Unit 4), and on the geophysical/
geological characteristics of the impacted area.
Lesson 4 progresses to three of the most potentially
destructive earthquake effects: liquefaction, landslides,
and tsunami. Each occurs when a seismic shock
impacts an area with certain physical characteristics.
Lesson 5 underlines the importance of site, as students
interpret maps highlighting different features of the
landscape. They will draw on their new knowledge to
make additions to the local map they began in Unit 1.
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F E M A
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