Investigating Plate Tectonics with Google Earth part of Structural Geology and Tectonics:Structure, Geophysics, and Tectonics 2012:Activities
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope
Students examine data sets of topography, bathymetry, volcano location, earthquake location and size, and ocean floor age in Google Earth to determine the location and attributes of different types of plate ...

Earthquake Investigation Workshop: Shake, Rattle, & Rock part of Geodesy:Activities
Daniel Murray, University of Rhode Island
This workshop is part of an NSF-funded effort to provide professional development to STEM teachers in Rhode Island. In this activity, students will make "earthquakes" using a simple model, the earthquake ...

Is the New Madrid Seismic Zone at risk for a large earthquake? part of Online Teaching:Activities for Teaching Online
Eliza Richardson, Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
In this lesson we discuss the controversy regarding the extent of seismic risk in the central United States today. We learn how to estimate earthquake recurrence interval using a variety of methods. This lesson ...

Izmit Earthquake part of Geophysics:Workshop 07:Geophysics Activities
Sarah Titus, Carleton College
This lab allows students to analyze earthquake seismicity from the North Anatolian fault using a variety of methods.

Earthquake Fingerprint Scanning and Induced Seismicity part of Videos:Videos Workshop 2014:Contributed Videos
Mike Brudzinski, Miami University-Oxford
This video explains an earthquake fingerprint scanning technique and how it can be used to identify seismicity potentially induced by human activity.

Japan Earthquake: Helicopter aerial view video of giant tsunami waves part of Videos:Video Gallery
This video is of the tsunami in Japan in 2011.

Earthquake Compare and Contrast Paper part of Oceanography:Activities
Sarah "Sally" Zellers, University of Central Missouri
Students will write a research paper comparing the Sumatran (2004) and Tohoku (2011) tsunami generating earthquakes.

Teaching Spatial Thinking Across the Geoscience Curriculum part of Spatial Thinking
Spatial thinking is one of the hallmarks of geoscientific thinking (e.g. Kastens et al., 2009; Manduca and Kastens, 2012), and it is multifaceted (e.g. Liben and Titus, 2012; Ormand et al., 2014). To produce ...

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.

Volcanoes at Subduction Zones part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~0.5 hour to complete. Students study the volcanic segmentation and earthquake distribution of the Andes continental volcanic arc. Then, they compare ...