My Science Box

Assessment

1. Collect the handouts.
2. Ask students to explain what causes an earthquake. Include both a short paragraph and a labeled picture.

Going Further

1. Add information about earthquake depth to the student tables and the class map. The deepest earthquakes tend to take place on or near subduction zones.
2. See if the location of volcanoes also matches the plate boundary lines. Add data about the mid-ocean ridges and identify plate boundary lines. See the Plate Patterns activity for details.
3. Look at the earthquakes that didn’t line up on a plate boundary. What is happening there? Investigate the causes of earthquakes that didn’t occur on a plate boundary.
4. Play with the “This Dynamic Planet” map which allows you to select certain types of data to display on a dynamically generated map. Some of the data types you can select are volcanoes, earthquakes of different magnitudes, impact craters, plate boundaries, latitude/longitude grids and more.