top of page

Little Lab Coats: Earthquakes

Writer's picture: Maria WheelerMaria Wheeler

Updated: Jan 30


candy buildings

This past Monday New England experienced one of the biggest earthquakes it has experienced in a long time. It was a 3.8 on the Richter Scale which is nothing like the earthquakes other countries experience, but it was a pretty strong earthquake for New England.


Earthquakes happen when tectonic plates move or rub against each other. Tectonic plates are under the dirt and water and they cover our entire world. When they move back and forth or rub up against each other they do a couple of different things. On a large scale over a very long time, the movement of tectonic plates makes mountains or trenches or convection waves.

tectonic plates
Map of Tectonic Plates

Tectonic plates cover the earth's entire surface and are free-floating. The earth has changed a lot since its creation. Pangea was a supercontinent and as the plates shifted the continents all moved apart. We know this happened because of the fossils that are discovered on different continents and the overall form of the continents. Tectonic plates do a couple of things. When two plates are shoved together it's called a collision. When one plate plunges beneath another it's called subduction. When two plates are pushed apart it's called Spreading. When two plates slide past each other is called transform faulting.


Tectonic plate movement can cause catastrophic earthquakes that can cause a lot of death and destruction. Because of this many buildings that are built in areas that have many strong earthquakes, are built with earthquake resistance technologies. This could include policies on how tall buildings can be in relation to how wide they are. It can also include the material buildings are made from and their structure.


A very common experience civil engineers and many other engineers do is try to build a structure that can withstand shaking.


 

The Materials

  • Jellos

  • Brownies

  • Toothpicks

  • Gumdrops

  • Baking tray


The Experiment


  1. Bake your brownies or make your jello in a pan and place it on a baking sheet.

  2. Build a structure out of toothpicks and gumdrops in your jello and your brownies.

  3. Have the same person share both the tray with jello and the tray with brownies.

  4. Watch to see which structure stays up the best and in what material.


 

Comments


bottom of page