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Education in K - 12 Schools
Tours of the TO
| Tours of the TO are part of an effort to increase the level of understanding of Earth Sciences in the community. 6th grade students tour the TO, giving them a glimpse into how Earth scientists conduct their research. They learn about earthquakes and tsunamis in Sumatra, how scientists at Caltech monitor and interpret seismic activity, and how the Himalayan mountains formed. They also tour the Seismo Lab, and participate in some fun, simple rock-and-hammer tests, leaving with the message as one student learned that: "Rocks tell stories!" (Read more)
To schedule a tour, send email to outreach (at) tectonics.caltech.edu |
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Bringing science to local schools
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The TO hosts high school teachers and students for summer reseach projects, as part of Caltech's Summer Research Connection. The first high school group, in the summer of 2009, used specialized software to create realistic maps and simulations (movie1, movie2) of the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates over the past 180 million years. At the conclusion, they gave a formal presentation (see slides or video) on their research project at a Caltech seminar series, and produced an educational web page designed for geometry students to explore rigid motion on a coordinate plane as applied to Plate Tectonics.
The second high school group, in the summer of 2010, studied the tectonic process of mountain building. They built a realistic model, called a “sandbox experiment,” and used it to model deformations (folds and faults) of the Earth’s crust at plate boundaries. They then ran experiments by varying the frictional properties of the system to see how that affected the deformation and mountain building process. At the conclusion, they presented their results at a Caltech seminar (slides, video) and produced a web page.
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