We figured out the criteria for a tsunami to occur:
We wanted to know more about how the wave actually moves, as the video footage we looked at looks very different from typical waves. Students wanted to develop a model themselves, so Mrs. Brinza took it upon herself to see if it would work:
- Large magnitude earthquakes
- Shallow depths
- Colliding/shifting plates in the ocean
We wanted to know more about how the wave actually moves, as the video footage we looked at looks very different from typical waves. Students wanted to develop a model themselves, so Mrs. Brinza took it upon herself to see if it would work:
This video STUNK! Our ideas for a model were way off, as the scale of an earthquake and tsunami are just beyond the walls of our classroom. So students wanted a bigger, deeper tank. Mrs. Brinza suggested her bathtub...and the students immediately chimed in and said YES! SO Mrs. Brinza recruited her daughter to help film the effects of the plate movement in a deeper, longer body of water!
This certainly helped us see more of what's going with the tsunami waves, but we also needed to see more, especially since water in a tub isn't necessarily the best way to really see what was going on with more scientific videos, so we turned to some geological organizations to help us better understand what's going on with tsunami waves.
After seeing each model, we agreed that there were benefits and limitations to each model, and we summarized our thinking in the following chart (this is one period's example):
All this figuring out about waves made us very aware of how the wave happens, what it does when it reaches different land forms, and how various communities could be affected. We put our "figuring out" process to work, forecasting risk for various locations on a map! Low, flat areas with lots of people who are closer to the epicenter of an earthquake are most at risk!