Wandering continents - continental drift

The new ELI today is 'Wandering continents; what evidence enables us to reconstruct the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea?'

This is a fun activity which can be used with younger children to introduce the aspect of plate tectonics known as continental drift, or as a revision exercise for older pupils. It uses simple evidence from the geological record on each continent to enable a reconstruction of an ancient supercontinent to be made.

You can find many more related activities for all age groups by searching for continental drift or plate tectonics on our website.

Rock identification made easy

Confused about which rock is which? Try our new teaching videos and workshop; all free to download on our website.

'Spot that Rock' teaching videos and

'Spot that Rock' workshop

Natural hazards in your local area?

The new ELI today is - 'Which natural hazards could damage the area where you live? How safe is your home area?'

Pupil are asked to look around their local regions to suggest what natural hazards might affect the areas in the future. In the activity, several photographs are used to stimulate discussion about natural hazards in pupils’ own home regions.

Many Earthlearningideas can be found about each of the natural hazards in the Natural Hazards category on our website.

Teacher trainees trying various Earthlearningideas in Madrid

An EGU (European Geosciences Union) workshop was held for teacher trainees in the Faculty of Education of the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid.

More photos can be seen in the ELI Photo gallery. Activities shown can be found on our website by using the search engine or the alphabetical index.

If you would like to book a similar workshop, please contact the ELI team.

Marie Tharp; a woman scientist in a man's world

The new ELI today is the last of our series about sea floor mapping. 'Marie Tharp: ‘The valley will be coming up soon’. Bruce Heezen: ‘What valley?’ A woman scientist in a man’s world – what was it like?'

This activity tells the amazing story of the mapping of the sea floor and it helps pupils to think what it might have been like to be a female scientist at a time when science was dominated by men and women's ideas were dismissed.

There are many activities on our website about the sea floor and about great scientists and 'how science works'. July 2020 marked 100 years since the birth of Marie Tharp. Today she is recognised for her huge contribution to the development of the Earth sciences. Her ground-breaking work now inspires the scientists, particularly the female scientists, of the future. She deserves to be as well known as Mary Anning.

Why are big earthquakes so much more destructive than small ones?

'Spaghetti quakes; why are big earthquakes so much more destructive than small ones?'

 This activity uses increasingly large bundles of dry spaghetti to demonstrate how each unit of logarithmic increase in earthquake magnitude is related to a 30-fold increase in energy release. It is a demonstration of “earthquake energy” using spaghetti, to help students to appreciate the use of logarithmic scales when
measuring quantities with huge ranges in values.

Many more ELIs about earthquakes can be found on our website either through the search engine or by using the alphabetical index.

 

Traverse of the eastern Pacific Ocean

The new ELI today is the third in our series on sea-floor mapping - 'Sounding the Pacific Ocean; an echo sounder traverse of the eastern Pacific'.

A pupil exercise in plotting echo sounder data from a ship’s traverse in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This is one of a series of activities involving sounding of ocean floors, and leads on to the relationship between the topographic features and plate tectonic theory.

The other activities can be found on our website by using the search engine or alphabetical index.