This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Peer Reviewed Teaching Activities collection. (view details)

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This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are

Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
Pedagogic Effectiveness
Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

Initial Publication Date: May 24, 2018 | Reviewed: August 4, 2022 (see revision history: 2 events)

Earthquake Basics Presentation

Description

This lecture and associated animations give a compelling 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.

Earthquake Basics Presentation (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 41.1MB Oct2 22)
Associated Animations: Earthquake Basics (Zip Archive 146.7MB May24 18)

Click to view

A similar lecture featuring the USA's Pacific Northwest region is available from the Cascadia EarthScope Earthquake and Tsunami Education Program (CEETEP)

Context

This resource is intended for introductory-level geoscience learners from secondary up to adult in a classroom or public lecture. Learners should have some knowledge of plate tectonics (ex. Alaska Plate Tectonics & Geohazards Presentation). Although specific examples are from Alaska, much of the content is widely applicable.

Teaching Notes

The slides contain a variety of notes to help users know the intention of the author.
All the animations associated with the presentation are available above in a zipped file. The smaller animations are embedded within the PowerPoint but are provided again here in case there are any issues. The larger animations should be played outside of the PowerPoint as they is a bit too large to reliably embed. The logical place to do so is indicated in the pptx notes.
Most likely in a classroom setting an instructor might break this presentation into several sections that go along with different class activities. In the upper right corner of some slides you may see some text that refers to different learner activities that are part of the ANGLE project collection. This should give the user some idea of the slides we generally associate with different activities.
Related activities are:
Some other good activities on earthquake topics