This educational module has been designed to provide students with the opportunity to interactively investigate the nature of earthquakes. The module has been divided into three major sections, "What is an Earthquake?", "The Distribution of Earthquakes", and "Measuring Earthquakes". Each section presents background material and interactive learning activities allowing students to understand such characteristics ... Full description.

This site contains information about discoveries made after World War II when ocean-going geologists adapted sensitive magnetometers developed for antisubmarine warfare for use in seafloor research. This modern technology gave geologists their greatest boost in more than a century of field work and led to the idea of sea floor spreading. This site has animations showing sea-floor spreading and a magnetometer ... Full description.

This report describes how the work of K. Wadati, Charles F. Richter, Harry O. Wood, and Beno Gutenberg resulted in a way of rating earthquakes in southern California according to an instrumental analysis of the amount of energy they released in the form of seismic waves. This work resulted in the first use of the term "magnitude" for describing the amount of energy released by an earthquake, and in ... Full description.

This report describes how measurements of earthquake magnitude, as quantified by the Richter Scale, have gradually replaced measurements of intensity, as characterized by the Modified Mercalli scale. Topics include the advantages of the Richter Scale, such as open-endedness, its purely instrumental measure which doesn't require observers' reports, and its usefulness for measuring earthquakes located ... Full description.

This homework exercise, which was designed for an undergraduate level geology class at Tulane University, asks the student to make evaluations about the Loma Prieta Earthquake and other earthquakes using seismograms, time travel curves, maps and other information. Full description.

This basic information about Foraminifera, an important microfossil explains what they are, where they live, and why they are important and also how they are used in the search for petroleum. The biology and classification of Foraminifera are also covered. In addition, photomicrographs of Foraminifera as captured by the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope at the Museum of Paleontology are included. ... Full description.

This website was developed for undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory earth or atmospheric science course. It is designed to supplement lecture and textbooks. Its goal is to make you a better consumer of weather information by providing dynamic graphics, animations, and science content about remote sensing, visible and infrared satellite imagery, and hurricanes. As part of the module, ... Full description.

This web site provides an interactive map of global seismic activity that is updated every 30 minutes. The site uses data from the National Earthquake Information Center to produce a world map with clickable areas of seismic activity. Users can click on geographical areas of the map, and will be taken to a table which describes the time, location, magnitude and comments about particular seismic events. ... Full description.