New ELI activity - Tsunami through the window

Ask your pupils what they might see and feel if a major tsunami wave hit the view they can see outside through the window or doorway. How big would it be, how fast would it be moving, is it carrying anything, what would you do, what caused it? These are just some of the suggested questions you could ask.

This new 'thought experiment' activity is available now on the Earthlearningidea website. Please try it out and let us have your comments.

If you have access to YouTube, there are a number of videos of the terrible tsunami that struck South East Asia on December 26th 2004. However, some are not suitable for the classroom. This one, Tsunami hits Thailand and South East Asia, lasts for 7 minutes and this one, Tsunami shows the ensuing devastation in Banda Aceh and lasts for 52 seconds.

More Comments on Quake Shake

We have received some very interesting additional information following the post of Thursday 23rd August. Both John Lahr of the US Geological Survey and Paul Denton of the British Geological Survey have added some useful facts. Click here to see these additional comments.

Click here to see all the comments received about this activity. This pdf file may be found on the Earthlearningidea website.

Trying out 'Quake shake' in India

Pupils from Vishwa Mangala School, Mangalore University campus are trying out 'Quake shake - will my home collapse', our sample Earthlearningidea activity. There was a large group of students aged about 14 years. Their teacher tells us that they all appreciated the demonstration and found it useful. Some of them guessed that the building which did not fall had good foundations.

If you have photos of your pupils trying out ELI activities, please send them to us for publication.

Google Earth Science Lessons

Steve Kluge from New York recently got in touch with ELI about his National Science Foundation funded project, creating a teacher friendly manual for developing earth science lessons using Google Earth.

You can find information about the manual here and the manual itself here. Looks really interesting.

Thanks Steve for your support of ELI and for letting us know about your project. Does anyone else have relevant projects they would like to share with ELI?