Earthquake Science Project

Since JJ lives with us now, we are the ones responsible for his HW (so is he). A few months back, a letter came home, that we had to sign. It stated that as a family we would make sure JJ has a Science Fair Project turned in on a certain day. Being as competitive as I am, I told him I would only help, if it was something really cool (who wants to spend all their time doing something that’s been done?). After looking at tons of ideas, I came across one that involved Lego’s. I know how much JJ loves building things so we went with

“Earthquake Proof Buildings”

Purpose- To see if we could design a city layout that could withstand an Earthquake. We wanted to see what works, what didn’t and why.

Hypothesis- JJ’s guess was as the building height increased, building stability would decrease.

Materials-

Building Structures

Shake Table

4X8 sheet of 1/2in. MDF or any other wood available this was leftover from a previous project
1X2 stock
wood glue
wood screws
circular saw
cordless drill
measuring tape
4ft straight edge
1 coffee can plastic lid
marbles “enough to fill the area of your lids”
green, brown, grey paint

Directions

Structures

1 Layout cutting board and take the long thin pieces of balsa wood.
2 Be sure you have enough to make four equal sides for a four sided building.
3 Measure and cut pieces to size needed.
4 Using hot glue or wood glue “Hot glue dries faster” begin gluing and pressing the sides together to form a box with a hollow middle.
5 Allow glue to dry
6 Measure and cut a piece to become to top of the box “building” and glue in place
7 After all buildings have been built begin painting the buildings

8. Once all skyscrapers are complete build different size/shape Lego buildings

9. Measure ALL of the buildings and document them

Shake table directions
1 Measure and cut out your base of the table using the MDF, we came up with 36in. X 26in.
2 Measure and cut the 1X2 stock to make 4 – 36in. side rails and 4 – 22in. End rails
3 glue the longer side of one side rail and stack another side rail ontop.
4 glue the edge of you base table where the glued side rails will set and screw together the side rail to the base table
5 repeat steps 3 and 4 for the other side and then again for the end rails
6 measure and cut a 30in. X 20in piece of MDF “this will be piece where your buildings will sit and act as the top layer of the Earth’s crust
7 clean off all wood and prepare surface for paint
8 layout all of the buildings to get an idea of how you want to layout the city
9 paint the shake table use grey for streets green for grass brown for your side rails
10 glue the plastic lid to center on the top of the MDF base table
11 fill the lid with marbles
12 lay the smaller piece of MDF on top of the marbles, test and make sure that it will move back and forth
13 layout your city with the buildings

Experiment

Trial 1 Back & Fourth Shaking (20 seconds) “P” Waves

Record your data, set back up and set your stop watch for another 20 seconds

Trial 2 Side to Side Shaking (20 seconds) “S” waves

Record, Set Up, Timer

Trial 3 Gentle Rolling (20 seconds) Surface waves

After all 3 trials are finished on the different types of seismic waves, make a graph and analyze your data.

To make this shake table to test your own project, you can get better step by step directions here

This post is linked to TGIF, Sunday Showcase, Science Sunday and HHH