Earthquake Risk Education Module for High-School Students

Abstract eng:
Education of young people about earthquakes and their effect on the society is an essential aspect of reduction of earthquake risk, particularly in urban areas where earthquakes are an inescapable fact of life. Simply put: the more is known about the hazard, the better our preparation for it is. This paper describes a lecture and a set of demonstrations prepared at the University of California Berkeley Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC) and the nees@berkeley George E. Brown NEES Equipment Site to educate middle- and high-school students about earthquakes. The lecture addresses the origins of earthquakes and mechanisms of fault rupture, as well as characteristics of ground shaking and its principal effects on structures. Furthermore, the lecture describes the principal means of making building structures more resistant to earthquakes. These ideas are used to entice students to construct structural models made of K’Nex toy construction components (www.knex.com). In a planned demonstration the students are asked to construct their own buildings in groups. Then, the constructed buildings are mounted on the instructional shaking table and tested to compare the response of the buildings to simulated earthquakes. These lectures and demonstrations have already been presented to several groups of high-school students visiting EERC and nees@berkeley. Evaluations completed by the students are used to evaluate the impact of the lectures and demonstrations. These results offer concrete evidence on the effectiveness of the developed curriculum.

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