Re:Earthquake structures

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From: The Lahrs (johnjan@lahr.org)
Date: Wed Oct 17 2001 - 05:47:56 PDT 

Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20011017063522.00adf200@pop3.norton.antivirus>
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 06:47:56 -0600
From: The Lahrs <johnjan@lahr.org>
Subject: Re:Earthquake structures

Hi Adam,

There are lots of ideas for earthquake shake tables for a classroom
here:
http://lahr.org/john-jan/earth_science/shake/shake.html
I'm not sure if a sander is the best source of shaking. A structure
that stands up to high frequency shaking might fail quickly at
a lower frequency that causes the building to resonate. This
can be done by attaching the structure to a board (with wheels,
like a skate board if you want to get fancy) and then moving
it back and forth by hand. Or, a variable speed drill can be
used.

At the bottom of the page there is a link to Larry Braile's
excellent pages. He describes an exercise in which groups of
students build buildings. Each group is given the same
materials (cardboard and tape) and the same amount of time
to come up with a good design. A big washer is taped to
the top of each building before the test to simulate the
weight of the building's contents. This exercise quickly
demonstrates that some designs are better than others!

Cheers,
John Lahr

At 01:20 AM 10/17/2001 , you wrote:
>Subject: Earthquake structures
>From: "Adam Singer" <adamsinger@earthlink.net>
>Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 16:29:12 -0700
>
>Hey all you pinholers ~ my Earth science class will be studying
>earthquake safety and structures, and was wanting to have the kids build
>a simple structure which we can test with the ol' orbital sander
>earthquake. I didn't want it to get so involved that they ended up
>gluing spaghetti for a week. Does anyone have suggestions for a quick
>project to test out the safety of various type of structures?
>-- Adam Singer

John C. Lahr
lahr@usgs.gov (work)
john@lahr.org (home)

Central Region Geologic Hazards Team
U.S. Geological Survey
PO Box 25046
Denver, CO 80225
Work: Phone (303) 273-8596 FAX (303) 273-8600
Home: Phone (303) 215-9913

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