HR: 11:50h
AN: ED52A-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Student-centered Experiments on Earthquake Occurrence Using the Seismic/Eruption Program
AU: Barker, J S
EM: barker@geol.binghamton.edu
AF: Binghamton University, Dept. of Geological Sciences, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
AU: Jones, A L
EM: jones@geol.binghamton.edu
AF: Binghamton University, Dept. of Geological Sciences, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
AU: * Hubenthal, M
EM: hubenth@iris.edu
AF: IRIS, 1200 New York Ave NW Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005
AB: Seismic/Eruption is a free Windows program that plots the locations of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions through time on maps of the world or various geographical areas. The hypocenter database can be updated via internet to include the NEIC catalog from 1960 to present. Many teaching activities based on this program (e.g. Braile and Braile, 2001) can help students draw conclusions about the distribution and rate of occurrence of earthquakes. In this activity students, individually or in small groups, select a seismically active region of interest and make their own map. They select a time window, perhaps 20 years. By changing the minimum magnitude setting in Seismic/Eruption and replaying the plots, they observe first-hand that large earthquakes occur less often than smaller earthquakes. The total number of earthquakes plotted is easily read from a counter on the screen. Students compile a table of the number of earthquakes per year with magnitude greater or equal to a certain magnitude, using a range of magnitude thresholds. These are then plotted on semi-log paper in the form of a Gutenberg-Richter plot. Connecting the points on the plot allows students to see a linear trend, and to think about why there may be departures from that linear trend for very small and very large magnitudes. If they assume earthquake occurrence is equally distributed in time, they can predict how often an earthquake of a given magnitude is likely to occur in their chosen region. They can also replay Seismic/Eruption to see whether that assumption is valid. Allowing students to interrogate the most accurate, complete and up-to-date earthquake catalog about a region of their own choosing provides ownership of the experiment. Students may choose an area of a recent newsworthy earthquake (e.g. Sumatra), or their family's ancestral region, or an area they are studying in another class. Students should be encouraged to pose questions and hypotheses about earthquake occurrence, knowing that they have the data and a display tool at hand to answer those questions.
UR: http://www.geol.binghamton.edu/faculty/jones
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
DE: 7223 Earthquake interaction, forecasting, and prediction (1217, 1242)
DE: 7230 Seismicity and tectonics (1207, 1217, 1240, 1242)
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005