Grade 6 Students Get Real-Life Lesson While Studying the Science of Earthquakes
Little did grade 6 Earth science students know that their study of earthquakes would get real-world evidence later that day.
Little did grade 6 Earth science students know that their study of earthquakes would get real-world evidence just hours later.
Using the online simulation learning tool Gizmos, students learned to interpret seismograms and find the relationship between the seismogram and the distance to an earthquake. The Gizmos lab helped students understand that earthquakes release several different types of seismic waves called P- and S-waves. Students observed that as the distance to the epicenter increases, the time difference between the arrival of the first P-wave and the first S-wave also increases, and charted that correlation as part of their assignment.
Soon after the lesson, Southern California experienced a 4.9-magnitude earthquake on Friday night that many students felt—and the evidence was in place to verify the learning that had just taken place.
One student’s home camera system captured the earthquake on video. Viewers can clearly hear two distinct seismic waves rattling the house—the P-wave and the S-wave—about 11 seconds apart.
Middle School science teacher Ashley Baffa put together a presentation showing the student’s video followed by a Google Maps demonstration. She marked where the USGS-established epicenter of Friday’s earthquake was near Anza, and measured the distance from the epicenter to San Juan Capistrano.
The distance, coupled with the time lapse between waves, was right in line with the chart the students created for their lab earlier in the day.
“This was a perfect application of what we are learning,” Mrs. Baffa said. “It was pretty neat that our graph and the way that we find the epicenter from a seismic station was shown in the video. That was a great connection to our learning and understanding of how earthquakes are recorded.”
St. Margaret’s Episcopal School
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