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Jan 18 2010

Science and the Haitian Earthquake

Posted by: Peter Rillero in All Grade Levels, Earth Science, Elementary School Science, Great Science Software, High School Science, Instructional Leadership, Middle School Science, On-Line Learning, Science Activities, science education, science instruction, Simulations, Software Reviews, tags: , , , ,

The videos on television show some of the massive destruction and the human toll of the recent earthquake in Haiti. It is difficult to imagine the suffering of the Haitian people. It is an unfortunate example of the devastation of a magnitude 7 earthquake.

It is natural to wonder why or how. When students are ready, teachers may want to discuss  earthquakes and their causes.

The folks at IRIS have a website with a PowerPoint presentation and Quicktime movie that haiti-destructionexplain a lot of details associated with this particular earthquake and earthquakes in general. The PowerPoint has excellent pictures of the destruction to buildings, without presenting images of human suffering that would be difficult for some students. The image to the right is taken from the PowerPoint.

IRIS (AKA the Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology) has lots of resources for learning about earthquakes including SeisMac 2.0 which allows Macintosh computers to become seismographs.

In the quest for Science Literacy, we strive to give students an understanding of natural events before they happen. Adaptive Curriculum has two strong Activity Objects, one is on determining the magnitude of an earthquake and the other is determining the location of the earthquake. The image below is from “Earthquakes: Measuring Magnitude.“measuring-magnitude-earthquake

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under All Grade Levels, Earth Science, Elementary School Science, Great Science Software, High School Science, Instructional Leadership, Middle School Science, On-Line Learning, Science Activities, science education, science instruction, Simulations, Software Reviews.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Science and the Haitian Earthquake”
  1. Charly Lance says: April 14th, 2010 at 10:16 pm

    Have anyone noticed that earthquake is a bit frequent these days? . Does climate change have any thing to do with earthquake?

  2. Brett Thurston says: March 30th, 2011 at 3:23 am

    Wow I remember seeing these images on television when the Haiti quake struck. Living in New Zealand I thought to myself at the time “I hope I never get to see what would happen to a city in New Zealand”

    Then of course our Christchurch got hit not once but twice with very large quakes. It’s unbelievable the power of the earth and it is just so easy to watch it on television and think that it could never happen to you.

    But you betcha that it can!

    Cheers
    Brett

  3. John says: April 5th, 2011 at 5:07 am

    @ Charly – earth quakes have been happening non stop throughout time. It’s just that a few major cities are getting hit right now that the media is all over it. People are going crazy right now if they don’t have their TV to stay on top of the media. At our shop we doTV Repairs in Sydney and people go crazy if they don’t get their stuff fixed in time to stay on top of the news. Funny stuff…

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