Earthquake Machine Demonstration
This classroom activity is a demonstration where students predict what will happen under various conditions. The "Earthquake Machine" shows relationships between stress, strain, friction along the fault ...

Earthquake resistant design
In groups of two, the students design and build a three-story building to be as earthquake resistant as possible. Using an in-house designed and built shaker table, we load each floor of the building based on area ...

Tsunami assignment
Students read reports about potential sources for tsunamis on the US east coast and compare them with previously discussed dangers for the west cost.

Historical Volcanic Eruptions
Students are asked to individually research and write a paper on a historical volcanic eruption and then are formed into groups to create a 10 minute stand-alone PowerPoint presentation which is shown and discussed ...

The Epicenter of a Southwestern Earthquake
This activity guides students to use the measured difference in P and S wave velocities to locate the epicenter of a minor earthquake in the Southwestern United States. Click here to view the full activity on the ...

Walking Field Trip to the San Andreas Fault
Due to our University's unique location approximately one mile from the nearest trace of the San Andreas Fault, we are able to take students on a walking field trip to the San Andreas. On the trip we set the ...

Liquefaction Live! activity
In this activity, students are provided with equipment and instructions for creating a simulation of liquefaction. The activity is great for students because it first asks them to reflect of what they know about ...

Field Exercise - Caddy Canyon Debris Flows
Field Exercise - Caddy Canyon Debris Flow(s): Glenn Thackray, Idaho State University Intended Audience: This assignment has been used in a senior graduate-level geomorphology course with lower and upper division ...

Diagnosing Landslide Hazard
Diagnosing Landslide Hazard: Les Hasbargen, SUNY College at Oneonta Intended Audience: This activity is designed for upper division Geology, Earth Science, and Earth Science education majors. Location: Landslide ...

Lab 3: Normal Climate Patterns
The lab activity described here was created by Betsy Youngman of Phoenix Country Day School and LuAnn Dahlman of TERC for the EarthLabs project. Activity Summary and Learning Objectives Students generate and ...

Forecasting Lake Effect Snow in Lake Superior region
This exercise is designed to present the realistic problems of forecasting weather. Lake effect snows are hard to forecast because they depend on information that isn't part of the regular set of information ...

Climate Change and Atlantic Hurricanes: A GIS Inquiry
Students make hypotheses about how hurricane numbers, locations, or intensities have been changing, and then use hurricane tracks, wind speed, barometric pressure, and dates to test their hypotheses.

Tropical Cyclones, Sea Surface Temperature, and Beyond
The activity will use historical data of sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone origin and/or tracks to identify trends. Students use Arc GIS to explore projected SST changes and predict areas where tropical ...

How Slab Dip Affects the Location of Volcanoes
Students will plot the locations of earthquakes on the top of subducting slabs to determine slab dip and will then develop hypotheses regarding the relationship between slab dip, the depth of the slab, and volcanic activity on the surface.

Volcanoes of Central America
Volcano distribution and tectonics at a convergent margin: Central American volcanoes

Air-sea Interactions: Activities in Oceanography
This online set of activities help students learn properties of ocean waves, wind-wave relationships and properties of tsunamis.

1993 Missouri River Flood Exercise
An exercise on the effects of flooding that took place in the upper Mississippi River drainage basin in 1993, using before and after satellite images.

Rivers and Flooding Lab
Understand flooding - why it occurs, how to measure the size and frequency of a flood, the relationship between size and flooding, and how human activity can increase the frequency of flooding events.

VEPP: Using maps to assess volcanic geologic hazards
This is an exercise that is in development and has not yet been fully tested in the classroom. Please check back regularly for updates and changes. Students will use a combination of topographic and geologic maps ...

VEPP: Working with the VEPP website in an online M.Ed. course
Students explore the VEPP website and complete a two-part problem set in which they work through the ideas presented in an EOS paper regarding eruptions at Kilauea and they try to find a deflation-inflation event ...