Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics

Project #3187 on iSENSEProject.org

Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics

Adapted from a Flinn Scientific 2009 Mapping Earthquakes and Volcanoes Activity

The purpose of this activity is to increase understanding of the Theory of Plate Tectonics and visualize how the theory can be used to explain earthquake locations.  This will be done by assembling a puzzle of the Earth's major tectonic plates, applying boundary type information to the puzzle map, then analyzing the location of a list of earthquakes that have occurred around the world.  Use the "Student Handout" file in the "Media" section to access the complete instructions for the student activity.

A note for teachers evaluating this project: the plate boundaries puzzle discussed in the student handout is proprietary information and cannot be posted online, but the end result of the Part I activity is that students will be creating a visual that looks exactly like the Plate Boundaries Map file attached here, with the only difference that their created puzzle will have the Pacific Plate centered in the middle of the document, rather than the African and South American plates pictured in the attached file.  They will then be able to draw conclusions about  where the data points on the Visualization compare with the plate boundaries on their assembled puzzle.

Guiding Questions which can be answered using this data:

1.  Look carefully at the Visualization that you have produced.  Are the locations of earthquakes randomly scattered over the Earth or do they seem to be concentrated in certain areas?  Explain.

2.  Which area of the world had the most earthquake activity according to the data provided?  HINT:  In the visualization, select “Tools” to access the Heat Map to help show marker density. Turn the radius up to 1,000,000 meters, check the box for "Display Markers," and check the box for "Cluster Markers.”

3.  Which tectonic plates were involved in producing the strongest earthquakes listed?  HINT: Stronger earthquakes have higher Richter Scale values.  ANOTHER HINT: Click the “Table” visualization option and sort the earthquake magnitude data by clicking on the ^ arrow.