Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”

A consortium of American universities is involved in earthquake engineering practice and research. Each campus of the consortium participates in outreach and education activities for the local schools and the public. One campus of the consortium, which operates earthquake field sites, designed a K-12 activity called “Make Your Own Earthquake” (MYOE). MYOE involves setting up earthquake field equipment (seismic instruments, data loggers, and computers) in a classroom. Children jump for 10 seconds, see their earthquake trace live on a computer screen and then take home a printed copy of their personal earthquake. Software was developed specifically for this activity. MYOE is used as part of a presentation on plate tectonics and seismicity and also as a station in a science fair. In this activity, students (and their families) engage with earthquake practitioners and explore topics of acceleration, ground motion, building vibrations, geology, and tectonics. Students really enjoy their physical participation in MYOE and often ask to repeat their “earthquake”. Two years ago, a new device became available that made MYOE portable and easy to use. Anew MEMS accelerometer with a USB port can plug into any laptop computer. The device is small, lightweight, and inexpensive. MYOE software is free and downloads easily from the internet. Through outreach efforts, many more teachers and schools are able to run MYOE on their own. With the introduction of the new sensor, other campuses in the earthquake engineering consortium have developed sophisticated activities for Make Your own Earthquake that align with state science standards. The consortium shares educational materials through a central website and K-12 teaching modules are available to the public. Some examples of the use of the new sensor for teaching activities include • A shake table activity where students build small structures with K’NEX and test them • A shake table activity where students compete to build the strongest structure • An experiment where students examine how the amount of energy (amplitude) of a signal changes with distance from the source One campus of the consortium has designed a version of Make Your Own Earthquake that is a stand-alone exhibit in a science museum. The installation includes an instrumented permanent platform for jumping and a touch screen monitor for displaying the earthquake. In the curriculum exchange, we will demonstrate Make Your Own Earthquake on a laptop computer, exhibit videos of the new museum installation and other MYOE activities, and provide links to where the resources can be downloaded. Photographs of Make Your Own Earthquake Students watching while a classmate makes her own earthquake. Students proudly displaying their earthquakes

Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”

A consortium of American universities is involved in earthquake engineering practice and research. Each campus of the consortium participates in outreach and education activities for the local schools and the public. One campus of the consortium, which operates earthquake field sites, designed a K-12 activity called “Make Your Own Earthquake” (MYOE). MYOE involves setting up earthquake field equipment (seismic instruments, data loggers, and computers) in a classroom. Children jump for 10 seconds, see their earthquake trace live on a computer screen and then take home a printed copy of their personal earthquake. Software was developed specifically for this activity. MYOE is used as part of a presentation on plate tectonics and seismicity and also as a station in a science fair. In this activity, students (and their families) engage with earthquake practitioners and explore topics of acceleration, ground motion, building vibrations, geology, and tectonics. Students really enjoy their physical participation in MYOE and often ask to repeat their “earthquake”. Two years ago, a new device became available that made MYOE portable and easy to use. Anew MEMS accelerometer with a USB port can plug into any laptop computer. The device is small, lightweight, and inexpensive. MYOE software is free and downloads easily from the internet. Through outreach efforts, many more teachers and schools are able to run MYOE on their own. With the introduction of the new sensor, other campuses in the earthquake engineering consortium have developed sophisticated activities for Make Your own Earthquake that align with state science standards. The consortium shares educational materials through a central website and K-12 teaching modules are available to the public. Some examples of the use of the new sensor for teaching activities include • A shake table activity where students build small structures with K’NEX and test them • A shake table activity where students compete to build the strongest structure • An experiment where students examine how the amount of energy (amplitude) of a signal changes with distance from the source One campus of the consortium has designed a version of Make Your Own Earthquake that is a stand-alone exhibit in a science museum. The installation includes an instrumented permanent platform for jumping and a touch screen monitor for displaying the earthquake. In the curriculum exchange, we will demonstrate Make Your Own Earthquake on a laptop computer, exhibit videos of the new museum installation and other MYOE activities, and provide links to where the resources can be downloaded. Photographs of Make Your Own Earthquake Students watching while a classmate makes her own earthquake. Students proudly displaying their earthquakes

Use Of Frp Composites In Civil Structural Applications

Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites or advanced composite materials are very attractive for use in civil engineering applications due to their high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, corrosion resistance, light weight and potentially high durability. Their application is of most importance in the renewal of constructed facilities infrastructure such as buildings, bridges, pipelines, etc. Recently, their use has increased in the rehabilitation of concrete structures, mainly due to their tailorable performance characteristics, ease of application and low life cycle costs. These characteristics and the success of structural rehabilitation measures have led to the development of new lightweight structural concepts utilizing all FRP systems or new FRP/concrete composite systems. This paper presents an overview of the research and development of applications of advanced composites to civil infrastructure renewal at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Promoting School Earthquake Safety through a Classroom Education Grassroots Approach

The earthquake engineering community has recognized that in seismically active regions throughout the United States, hundreds of thousands of students and staff unknowingly study and work in structurally vulnerable school and university buildings. The School Earthquake Safety Initiative (SESI), spearheaded by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), is a collaborative network of diverse, expert, and impassioned professionals who are committed to creating and sharing knowledge and tools that enable broadminded, informed decision making around school earthquake safety. The Classroom Education and Outreach Subcommittee of SESI is tackling the problem of school safety from a grassroots approach, with the goal of using education in the classroom to create on ongoing dialog with parents, teachers, and administrators thereby developing advocates for earthquake school safety. To do so, well-defined K-12 engineering curriculum aligned with standards that are well documented and can be easily taught to a range of teachers for broad dissemination have been developed for 4th grade and high school physics classes. The modules lead students through hands-on and research activities to learn basic earthquake engineering design principles and make use of an electronic instructional shaking table that allows students to test structures under representative earthquake loading. In an effort to reach a large number of schools across the country, the initiative is engaging regional professional and university student chapters to work closely with classroom teachers and collaborate on delivering the activities

Simulating Remote Support for Mathematical Perseverance Through a Digital Sketching Application

This exploratory study showed how a digital sketching application helped keep 4th-grade students engaged with challenging mathematics tasks and support their perseverance to learn mathematics conceptually. The application is currently being developed as a tool based on digital assignments for which students freehand sketch visual representations to solve conceptual fractions tasks. Participants engaged with a simulation of the application and received personalized and conceptual feedback based on their sketching mistakes. Our findings showed that participants were able to leverage such feedback to persevere with the task and make mathematical progress, even at moments when they were most challenged and frustrated

NHERI@UC San Diego 6-DOF Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table Facility

Since its commissioning in 2004, the UC San Diego Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table (LHPOST) has enabled the seismic testing of large structural, geostructural and soil-foundation-structural systems, with its ability to accurately reproduce far- and near-field ground motions. Thirty-four (34) landmark projects were conducted on the LHPOST as a national shared-use equipment facility part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) and currently Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) programs, and an ISO/IEC Standard 17025:2005 accredited facility. The tallest structures ever tested on a shake table were conducted on the LHPOST, free from height restrictions. Experiments using the LHPOST generate essential knowledge that has greatly advanced seismic design practice and response predictive capabilities for structural, geostructural, and non-structural systems, leading to improved earthquake safety in the community overall. Indeed, the ability to test full-size structures has made it possible to physically validate the seismic performance of various systems that previously could only be studied at reduced scale or with computer models. However, the LHPOST's limitation of 1-DOF (uni-directional) input motion prevented the investigation of important aspects of the seismic response of 3-D structural systems. The LHPOST was originally conceived as a six degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) shake table but built as a single degree-of-freedom (1-DOF) system due to budget limitations. The LHPOST is currently being upgraded to 6-DOF capabilities. The 6-DOF upgraded LHPOST (LHPOST6) will create a unique, large-scale, high-performance, experimental research facility that will enable research for the advancement of the science, technology, and practice in earthquake engineering. Testing of infrastructure at large scale under realistic multi-DOF seismic excitation is essential to fully understand the seismic response behavior of civil infrastructure systems. The upgraded 6-DOF capabilities will enable the development, calibration, and validation of predictive high-fidelity mathematical/computational models, and verifying effective methods for earthquake disaster mitigation and prevention. Research conducted using the LHPOST6 will improve design codes and construction standards and develop accurate decision-making tools necessary to build and maintain sustainable and disaster-resilient communities. Moreover, it will support the advancement of new and innovative materials, manufacturing methods, detailing, earthquake protective systems, seismic retrofit methods, and construction methods. This paper will provide a brief overview of the 1-DOF LHPOST and the impact of some past landmark projects. It will also describe the upgrade to 6-DOF and the new seismic research and testing that the LHPOST6 facility will enable