Cross-bedding and way-up structures

Today's new ELI is another in our series about sedimentary structures. This one 'Cross-bedding' uses cross bedding to determine the way-up of a bed of sedimentary rock. It gives an introduction to the types of evidence which can be obtained from cross-bedding in sediments and in sedimentary rocks.

Other activities to show sedimentary structures can be found in the link to Teaching strategies on our website.

'Continental drift' to 'Plate tectonics'

'Wegener's 'Continental drift' meets Wilson's 'Plate tectonics'. This is an activity to show how Wegener's continental drift evidence matches up with evidence for plate tectonics. Pupils can sort out which parts of the evidence we now have for plate tectonics, Alfred Wegener knew about in the 1920s.

You can find lots more ideas for teaching this topic on the ELI website in Teaching strategies.

Modelling energy transmission in seismic waves

'Merry waves - all year round; modelling how the energy of seismic waves is transmitted' is our latest new ELI. At the end of the activity pupils can:-
• describe how energy is transmitted in the form of waves;
• note that there is no macroscopic displacement of mass involved in the process;
• explain how P and S waves move though the Earth’s interior;
• explain how a tsunami wave propagates though a mass of water.
This is one on many Earthlearningideas about Earthquakes and earthquake waves.

Subduction of underwater mountains

Amazing new images from the depths of the Pacific Ocean reveal one of Earth's most violent processes: the destruction of massive underwater mountains. They expose how tectonic action is dragging giant volcanoes into the ocean trench. The volcanoes are strung across several thousand kilometres of ocean floor and are moving westward on the Pacific tectonic plate at up to 6cm per year.
The extraordinary scene was captured along the Tonga Trench during a research expedition last summer. The trench is a highly active fault line running north from New Zealand towards Tonga and Samoa.
The video clip featured here could be used with any of our Plate tectonics activities