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?

New Earthlearningidea activity

Our new activity is now ready for you to try - 'When will it blow? - predicting eruptions'. It shows how a simple tiltmeter can demonstrate the bulging of a volcano before eruption. Our short video clip shows the bulging in action.

This is a brilliant, simple activity and could form part of a lesson about volcanic eruptions and their effects. It could also be used as part of the preparation for the best response to an eruption in a volcanic area. Pupils will be able to relate this simple classroom demonstration to the fact that tiltmeters are used on volcanoes all over the world to help to predict eruptions.

Please try this out and let us have your comments here.

ELI activities are now available in Spanish

Thanks to Aulagea, a service for teachers and learners of the Department of Geology of the University of Buenos Aires, our activities will now be available in Spanish.

'Quake Shake - will my home collapse?' has already been translated and is available on the website.

Quake Shake - extension idea

Many thanks, Thomas, for your interesting extension thoughts for Quake Shake. This sounds a really good idea and one which students would certainly enjoy, especially the 'quake-off' at the end! If you try this out, please let us know the results.

Just click here to see the comments on Quake Shake. All comments and suggestions like this are gratefully received and will be added to the website, after the original activity. By the end of the International Year of Planet Earth, we shall have 57 activities and, hopefully, lots of extension and modification ideas.