This lesson introduces students to the nature of earthquakes and volcanoes. They will discover how earthquake intensity is measured, where earthquakes occur (by studying real-time data), and what global patterns exist. During the course of this activity, students will conduct Web research and collect online data to aid in understanding the experience of a real earthquake through reports of eyewitnesses ... Full description.

This lesson plan is part of the DiscoverySchool.com lesson plan library for grades K-5. It focuses on tsunamis, or tidal waves, and how they are caused by a certain type of earthquake. Students work in teams to produce earthquake wave effects on water. Included are objectives, materials, procedures, discussion questions, evaluation ideas, suggested readings, and vocabulary. There are videos available ... Full description.

The Weather Watch series of online projects investigates seasonal weather phenomena. Students discover the scientific explanations for these events, and use tools and resources for enhanced research. The Hurricanes project allows students to monitor patterns and plot the progression of hurricanes. The Winter Storms project contains an interactive weather maker allowing students to create different ... Full description.

This lesson will allow students to conduct Internet research about earthquakes and buildings that have successfully withstood them, design and build models of an earthquake-proof building, and evaluate the best earthquake-proof model using an earthquake simulator that they construct. This site has an overview of the lesson, a list of materials, detailed procedures for the teacher including a list ... Full description.

This website introduces students to earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. It includes reports about specific disasters as well as a quiz. Each report contains vocabulary words linked with their definitions and experiments to similate the natural disasters. Full description.

In this activity students explore the difference between brittle and ductile deformation in everyday materials and how material behavior is influenced by temperature and the rate of deformation. They then apply the same concepts to rocks and to the occurrence of earthquakes and mountain ranges at plate boundaries. Students will understand that rocks are forced to change shape at tectonic plate boundaries, ... Full description.

This website teaches students about natural disasters, including blizzards, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, fires, and avalanches. There are photographs of each disaster and safety tips as well as definitions of the disasters and information about where they are found. Full description.

In this activity, the process of finding the epicenter of an earthquake with a travel time graph is simulated. During the course of this activity students will model how earthquake waves travel through the Earth at different speeds, construct and utilize a graph to characterize the relationship between distance and time of travel of seismic waves (a travel time-curve), and use the constructed time-travel ... Full description.

This list of reference material was prepared by the Seismological Society of America to provide teachers (primarily grades K-12) with resource information that will be of use in teaching topics related to seismology. The resources are separated into seven categories, the first of which is reference information (primarily books, scientific papers and pamphlets). Other resources include maps, slide ... Full description.

Weathering and erosion work together as natural forces, removing and transporting material. Sediments, the by-products of these processes, are subsequently deposited to produce characteristic landforms such as dunes, deltas, and glacial moraines. This slide show presents images of landforms that result from erosion and weathering, as well as measures designed to mitigate their unwanted effects. Full description.