Rocks are Elastic!! Seeing is Believing
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology)
This activity helps learners see the elastic properties of rocks by actually bending marble. How rocks respond to stress is a fundamental concept, critical to forming explanatory models in the geosciences (e.g., elastic rebound theory). Whereas learners are likely to have lots of experience with rocks, few will have directly experienced them behaving elastically. As a result of this "missed experience", most learners conceptualize rocks as rigid solids; a concept which generally serves students well in everyday life but impedes learning about particular geologic concepts.

Seismic Slinky: Modeling P and S waves
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology)
Students will produce P and S waves using a Slinky© to understand how seismic waves transfer energy as they travel through solids. All types of waves transmit energy, including beach waves, sound, light, and more. When an earthquake occurs it generates four different types of seismic waves. We will focus on two of these: Compressional-P (longitudinal) and shearing-S (transverse) "body waves." These travel through the Earth with distinct particle motion and predictable speed.

Human Wave: Modeling P and S Waves
IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology) and ShakeAlert
Lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, learners are the medium that P and S waves travel through in this simple, but effective demonstration. Once "performed", the principles of P and S waves will not be easily forgotten. This demonstration explores two of the four main ways energy propagates from the hypocenter of an earthquake as P and S seismic waves. The physical nature of the Human Wave demonstration makes it a highly engaging kinesthetic learning activity that helps students grasp, internalize and retain abstract information.

How Do We Know Where an Earthquake Originated?
Jeffrey Barker (Binghamton University) & Michael Hubenthal (IRIS)
Students use real seismograms to determine the arrival times for P and S waves and use these times to determine the distance of the seismic station from the earthquake. Seismograms from three stations are provided to determine the epicenter using the S – P (S minus P) method. Because real seismograms contain some "noise" with resultant uncertainty in locating arrival times of P and S waves, this activity promotes appreciation for uncertainties in interpretation of real scientific data.

Earthquake Hazard Maps & Liquefaction: Alaska emphasis
TOTLE (Teachers on the Leading Edge), CEETEP (Cascadia EarthScope Earthquake and Tsunami Education Program), EarthScope ANGLE, and ShakeAlert projects
Ground shaking is the primary cause of earthquake damage to man-made structures. This exercise combines three related activities on the topic of shaking-induced ground instability: a ground shaking amplification demonstration, a seismic landslides demonstration, and a liquefaction experiment. The amplitude of ground shaking is affected by the type of near-surface rocks and soil. Earthquake ground shaking can cause even gently sloping areas to slide when those same areas would be stable under normal conditions. Liquefaction is a phenomenon where water-saturated sand and silt take on the characteristics of a dense liquid during the intense ground shaking of an earthquake and deform. Includes Alaska and San Francisco examples.

Earthquake Basics Presentation
Robert Butler (ANGLE Project)
This lecture and associated animations give a strong introduction to earthquakes--including earthquake waves, magnitude, intensity, USArray seismic data, and resulting hazards such as landslides, liquefaction, and building failure. It also includes some information on seismically resilient building design. It uses Alaska as the case study site. A similar lecture featuring the USA's Pacific Northwest region is available from the Cascadia EarthScope Earthquake and Tsunami Education Program (CEETEP)

Alaskan Volcanoes & Hazards Presentation
This lecture and associated animations give a basic introduction to Alaskan volcanoes, volcanic hazards, and volcano monitoring.

SeismicWaves Viewer & SeismicEruption Software
Roger Groom, Mt Tabor Middle School
This activity includes both the Seismic Waves Viewer and the Seismic Eruption software to help learners better understand earthquakes, volcanoes, and the structure of the Earth. Seismic Waves is a browser-based tool to visualize the propagation of seismic waves from historic earthquakes through Earth's interior and around its surface. By carefully examining these seismic wave fronts and their propagation, the Seismic Waves tool illustrates how earthquakes can provide evidence that allows us to infer Earth's interior structure. Seismic Eruption shows seismicity (earthquakes) and volcanic activity in space and time from 1960 to present. When the program is running, the user sees lights, which represent earthquakes, flashing on the screen in speeded-up time. The user can control the speed of the action. In addition, the program can show seismicity under Earth's surface in three-dimensional and cross-sectional views. Earthquakes can be selected by magnitude and volcanic eruptions can be selected by volcanic explosivity index. In this way, large earthquakes and large eruptions can be selected to emphasize how different types of plate boundaries are characterized by different magnitudes of earthquakes (e.g. no major or great earthquakes occur on spreading ocean ridges). This lesson plan was developed by , Portland Oregon. Students investigate how seismic waves travel through Earth's internal layers and bounce and bend at internal boundaries between mantle, outer core, and inner core.

Pasta Quake: Exploring Earthquake Magnitude
Paul Doherty (Exploratorium Teacher Institute) and Roger Groom (Mt Tabor Middle School) with improvements by ShakeAlert
This short activity provides an intuitive introduction to earthquake magnitude using an everyday item--spaghetti. Learners are introduced to the earthquake magnitude scale by breaking different amounts of uncooked noodles. Visual scale of the pasta emphasizes the relative differences between magnitudes with each whole step in magnitude. For older students, the demonstration helps students understand why seismologists use the nonlinear logarithmic scale to best graph the huge range of quantities.

USArray Seismic Wave Visualizations: Educator Information
These animations show how the ground responds when seismic waves from worldwide earthquakes sweep across more than 400 sensitive seismograph stations of (USArray), the seismologic component of EarthScope. Each animation has a map of the active USArray grid at the time of the earthquake. These animations are a creative use of the data being received by this unusually dense array of monitoring stations that were deployed as a means to "image" the roots of our continent.