Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Exploring Spreadsheets with Microsoft Excel part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students work with a large set of earthquake data, examine types of charts available in Excel, and use a spreadsheet to ...

Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Learners use the GPS Velocity Viewer, or the included map packet to visualize relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate boundaries as a jigsaw activity.

1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Visualizations part of Hazards:Events
The earthquake that struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906 remains one of the strongest and most significant earthquakes in US history. The fire that developed in its aftermath brought the city to its knees. This collection presents links to images, films, panoramas and animations about the earthquake and fire.

Earthquake Case Study part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Kaatje van der Hoeven Kraft, Whatcom Community College
This activity is a multiple case study analysis of different earthquakes that leads to student interpretation of claims, evidence and prediction/recommendations.

February 2010 Chile Earthquake and Tsunami part of Hazards:Events
Centered off the coast near Maule, Chile, this 8.8 magnitude earthquake on February 27, 2010 was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The massive quake also triggered a tsunami that swept across the Pacific basin.

Tectonic Plates part of Videos:Video Gallery
In this video we describe the three major compositional layers of Earth and the characteristics of a tectonic plate which is composed of lithosphere representing parts of the crust and mantle. The lithosphere is divided into pieces we call tectonic plates. Ah, you say, but can you demonstrate what you mean using an orange? Why, yes, yes we can. After the orange demo, we illustrate how to use maps of earthquake locations to draw outlines of Earth's major tectonic plates and give them names. Following the video we want you to be able to take a blank map of the world and draw a reasonable sketch of where the major plate boundaries are located.

Earthquake Machine Demonstration part of Introductory Courses:Activities
David Steer, University of Akron Main Campus
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 ...

Short Geology Research Paper part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Mary Gorte, Delta College
Students are assigned to take a topic and research it in some depth, beyond the discussion in the class or in the book. The paper is 4-6 typed pages in length. Suggested topics include geologic hazards, geologic ...

Earthquake resistant design part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Lawrence L. Malinconico, Lafayette College
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 ...