Natural Disasters

Students analyze data of tornadoes throughout the United States. They create a bar graph of the number of tornadoes for the top ten states in the country and then calculate the median and the mode of the data.

Students learn about landslides, discovering that there are different types of landslides that occur at different speeds — from very slow to very quick. All landslides are the result of gravity, friction and the materials involved. Students learn what makes landslides dangerous and what engineers ar...

Students use their knowledge of tornadoes and damage. They work in groups to design structures that can withstand and protect people from tornadoes. Each group creates a poster with the name of its engineering firm and a picture of its structure, which they present to the rest of the class.

This activity is a teacher-led demonstration of continental drift and includes a math worksheet for students involving the calculation of continental drift over time. Students will understand what continental drift is, why it occurs, and how earthquakes occur because of it.

Students learn about the structure of the earth and how an earthquake happens. In one activity, students make a model of the earth including all of its layers. In a teacher-led demonstration, students learn about continental drift. In another activity, students create models demonstrating the di...

They make a model of a seismograph—a measuring device that records an earthquake on a seismogram. Students also investigate which structural designs are most likely to survive an earthquake.

The school’s playground is flooded again, and the students cannot go out to recess! Students learn about the different states of matter and how water changes. They use this knowledge, along with research about natural disasters, to come up with an engineering solution that prevents playground floodi...

Students learn about various natural hazards and specific methods engineers use to prevent these hazards from becoming natural disasters. They study a hypothetical map of an area covered with natural hazards and decide where to place natural disaster prevention devices by applying their critical thi...

Students are introduced to faults in the context of plate tectonics. They learn about different kinds of faults and their relationship to earthquakes. Student pairs create cardboard models of the three different types of faults—transcurrent, normal and reverse—as they learn about how earthquakes are...

Students explore the impact of changing river volumes and different floodplain terrain in experimental trials with table top-sized riverbed models. The models are made using modeling clay in aluminum baking pans placed on a slight incline.

In this activity, students learn about the Richter Scale for measuring earthquakes and make a booklet with drawings that represent each rating of the Richter Scale.

In this activity, students learn about the Mercalli Scale for rating earthquakes and make a booklet with drawings that represent each rating of the scale.

Students explore how different materials (sand, gravel, lava rock) with different water contents on different slopes result in landslides of different severity. They measure the severity by how far the landslide debris extends into model houses placed in the flood plain.

Students are introduced to natural disasters and learn the difference between natural hazards and natural disasters.

Students observe an in-classroom visual representation of a volcanic eruption. During the activity, students observe, measure and sketch the volcano, seeing how its behavior provides engineers with indicators used to predict an eruption.

Students employ the full engineering design process to research and design prototypes that could be used to solve the loss of sea turtle life during a hurricane. Students learn about sea turtle nesting behaviors and environmental impacts of hurricanes. Students work collaboratively to build structur...

Students learn about seismology by using a sample seismograph constructed out of common classroom materials. The students work in groups to represent an engineering firm that must analyze the seismograph for how it works and how to read the seismogram it creates.

Students use a table-top-sized tsunami generator to observe the formation and devastation of a tsunami. Students make villages of model houses and buildings to test how different material types are impacted by the huge waves.

Students make sense of the design challenges engineers face that arise from earthquake phenomena. Students work as engineering teams to explore concepts of how engineers design and construct buildings to withstand earthquake damage by applying elements of the engineering design process by building t...

In this activity, students learn about how tornadoes are formed and what they look like. By creating a water vortex in a soda bottle, they get a first-hand look at tornadoes.

Students learn about tornadoes - their basic characteristics, damage and occurrence. Students are introduced to the ways that engineers consider strong winds, specifically tornadoes, in their design of structures.

Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and what makes them so dangerous. They learn that engineers design detection and warning equipment, as well as structures that that can survive the strong wave forces. In a hands-on activity, students use a table-top-sized tsunami generator...

Students learn about the causes, composition and types of volcanoes. They begin with an overview of the Earth's interior and how volcanoes form. Once students know how volcanoes function, they learn how engineers predict eruptions.

Students are introduced to the concept of a dam and its potential benefits, which include water supply, electricity generation, flood control, recreation and irrigation. This lesson begins an ongoing classroom scenario in which student engineering teams working for the Splash Engineering firm design...

Students learn about floods, discovering that different types of floods occur from different water sources, but primarily from heavy rainfall. Students learn what makes floods dangerous and what engineers design to predict, control and survive floods.

In this activity, students learn about how tornadoes are formed and what they look like. By creating a water vortex in a soda bottle, they get a first-hand look at tornadoes.

Through this earth science curricular unit composed of eight activities, student teams are presented with the scenario that an asteroid will impact the Earth. In response, their challenge is to design the location and size of underground caverns to shelter the people from an uninhabitable Earth for ...

Students design and build devices to protect and accurately deliver dropped eggs. The devices and their contents represent care packages that must be safely delivered to people in a disaster area with no road access. Similar to engineering design teams, students design their devices using a number o...

Students learn about water erosion through an experimental process in which small-scale buildings are placed along a simulated riverbank to experience a range of flooding conditions. They make model buildings either with a 3D printer or with LEGO® pieces and then see how their designs and riverbank ...

Students explore the impact of changing river volumes and different floodplain terrain in experimental trials with table top-sized riverbed models. The models are made using modeling clay in aluminum baking pans placed on a slight incline.

Students investigate how mountains are formed. Students learn that geotechnical engineers design technologies to measure movement of tectonic plates and mountain formation, as well as design to alter the mountain environment to create safe and dependable roadways and tunnels.

Students learn what causes hurricanes and what engineers do to help protect people from destruction caused by hurricane winds and rain.

To kickoff the Adventure Engineering Asteroid Impact unit, students learn of the impending asteroid impact scenario, form teams and begin to study the situation in depth. A simple in-class simulation shows them the potential for destruction and disaster. They look at maps and complete a worksheet an...

Students design and build their own model levees. Acting as engineers for their city, teams create sturdy barriers to prevent water from flooding a city in the event of a hurricane.

Students groups build water filters using activated carbon, cotton and other materials to clean a "dirty" water sample made from chocolate powder added to tap water. They test and make observations of filter effectiveness, suggesting material and layering design improvements.

Students act as engineers to solve a hypothetical problem that has occurred in the Swiss Alps due to a natural seismic disaster. Working in groups, they follow the engineering design process steps to create model sleds that meet the requirements to transport materials to people in distress that live...

In this unit, students learn the basics about weather and the atmosphere. They investigate materials engineering as it applies to weather and the choices available to us for clothing to counteract the effects of weather. Students have the opportunity to design and analyze combinations of materials f...

Students learn about maps and the global positioning system (GPS). Then they apply their understanding by using the free Google Earth Pro GIS software to explore past severe weather data for tornado and hurricane natural disasters in order to provide evidence-based recommendations to a (hypothetical...

Students create and analyze composite materials with the intent of using the materials to construct a structure with optimal strength and minimal density. The composite materials are made of puffed rice cereal, marshmallows and chocolate chips. They determine the material density and test its compre...

Students become environmental engineers as they model membranes and membrane treatments to remove scaling during water filtration. Using cheese cloth to represent a simple membrane, students soak their “membrane” in a supersaturated salt (or sugar) solution and measure how much salt (or sugar) cryst...

Students learn what causes earthquakes, how we measure and locate them, and their effects and consequences. Through the online Earthquakes Living Lab, student pairs explore various types of seismic waves and the differences between shear waves and compressional waves.

Students learn how engineers characterize earthquakes through seismic data. Then, acting as engineers, they use real-world seismograph data and a tutorial/simulation accessed through the Earthquakes Living Lab to locate earthquake epicenters via triangulation and determine earthquake magnitudes.

Students study how geology relates to the frequency of large-magnitude earthquakes in Japan. Using the online resources provided through the Earthquakes Living Lab, students investigate reasons why large earthquakes occur in this region, drawing conclusions from tectonic plate structures and the loc...

Students use U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) real-time, real-world seismic data from around the planet to identify where earthquakes occur and look for trends in earthquake activity. They explore where and why earthquakes occur, learning about faults and how they influence earthquakes.

Students learn how to use and graph real-world stream gage data to create event and annual hydrographs and calculate flood frequency statistics. Using an Excel spreadsheet of real-world event, annual and peak streamflow data, they manipulate the data (converting units, sorting, ranking, plotting), s...

In this hands-on activity, student groups design, build, test and improve devices to pump water as if they were engineers helping a rural village meet their drinking water supply. Students keep track of their materials costs, and calculate power and cost efficiencies of the prototype pumps.

Students explore the science behind soil liquefaction by examining devices that mimic quicksand. They design quicksand testing devices, iterate on those designs, and then engineer ways to prevent objects from sinking in quicksand. Students learn about stress factors in physical science as well as th...

Students learn about the water cycle and its key components. They learn how we can use the theory of conservation of mass to estimate the amount of water that enters a watershed (precipitation, groundwater flowing in) and exits a watershed (evaporation, runoff, groundwater out).

Students learn about the underlying factors that can contribute to Plinian eruptions (which eject large amounts of pumice, gas and volcanic ash, and can result in significant death and destruction in the surrounding environment), versus more gentle, effusive eruptions. They experiment with three fl...