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Earthquakes: Rocking Your World (April 1, 2005, One)

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Program Summary

Earthquakes have been shaping the Earth for billions of years. They’ve created mountains and made islands appear and disappear. Their strength can range from a tremor that only a seismograph can detect to the massive temblor that sent a killer wave racing towards southeast Asia in December 2004. And we never know when one will hit.

Earthquakes occur when tectonic plates grind against each other along fault lines. Quakes can occur in “swarms,” with an initial major tremor followed by dozens and sometimes hundreds of aftershocks, some of which are nearly as strong as the first and may occur months later. The earthquake that rocked Sumatra and Thailand on March 28, 2005, for example, was an aftershock from last December’s. Though it was a powerful quake in and of itself (8.7 out of 10 on the Richter scale) it cost far fewer lives and did far less damage because it was smaller in magnitude and occurred along a much shorter section of fault line. Ira’s guest warns that this cluster of activity may indicate that more quakes could be on their way in the same region or perhaps below the Himalayan mountain range.

Guests

Kerry Sieh, Robert P. Sharp professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California

Related Links and Resources

The Globe and Mail, March 31, 2005: Dec. 26 Quake Miscalculated, Scientists Say
Washington Post, March 28, 2005: Region Prone to Tremblers

For Discussion:

• What is a tectonic plate? How do they cause earthquakes?
• What is the difference between tectonic plate movement along the San Andreas Fault and the Sunda Trench, source of the recent southeast Asian earthquakes? What kind of damage does each one create?
• Why didn’t the second quake cause a killer tsunami?

Activities

I feel it in my sole. Strong Vibes, a lesson plan from the New York Times Learning Network, uses rubber bands to examine stress and earthquakes. Students research earthquakes and prepare television coverage of a fictional event in the Pacific Northwest. The Learning Network’s Web Explorer: Earthquakes pulls together resources from all over the Web to bring you everything you ever wanted to know about earthquakes, with well-written text, videos, animations, and activities, including participating in a virtual earthquake and becoming a virtual seismologist.

Move over. Movers and Shakers, a Thinkquest project, is a well-organized study of earthquakes and volcanoes presented in short video clips by an earthquake scientist. Illustrations, animations, and links to resources enhance the experience. Careers in geology are also presented.

Rolling thunder. Earthquakes are a hot topic at the BBC Science & Nature site, where a simple animation demonstrates quake dynamics. Earthquake Storms looks at the development of an earthquake theory that may help to predict them. Bitesize, a BBC site for teachers, answers all sorts of questions sent in by students; one answer talks about the difficulty of predicting quakes and methods being used currently to try. A search on earthquakes at this site brings up five pages of quake-related questions students,

Just for the heck of it. Britain rarely experiences an earthquake, so some students decided to create their own. On September 7, 2001, one million English school children participated in the The Giant Jump, during which they jumped up and down at the same time! The resulting movement was recorded by seismometers: A tiny earthquake was actually produced.

To learn more about quakes and visit great sites, stop by Science Friday Kids Connection Shake it, Baby! Earthquakes! (May 30, 2003, Hour Two) For info on tsunamis, go to Tsunami Science: (December 31, 2004, Hour Two) and Ecological Impact of the 2004 Tsunami (January 7, 2004, Hour Two)

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

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