Loose Soil vs. Compact Soil

As our unit on earthquakes comes to a conclusion, on Thursday we performed our first investigation of how different types of soil can effect the buildings they are built on. In our investigation we used two beakers full of sand, one was full of sand only, the other contained soil with glue to harden the sand. The sand with glue represented compact soil and the beaker of sand only represented loose soil. We used three pennies in each beaker to simulate buildings/houses.



The task for the students was to measure out their sand and glue in the given beakers, then place the pennies into each soil type and simulate p-waves and s-waves. By doing this the students are investigating which soil type is more hazardous to build upon. Also the question was posed to the students, what could your government do to help people in these areas? If you would like to share feel free, I will post some of my student's responses later this week.

Mr. McClung