My lesson went very well! I had two groups of students that I used for my lesson. My brother is going into 6th grade, so I was able to get some students there but unfortunately half of them did not show up for the lesson. I conducted part of the lesson with two of his friends and then later on in the week with friends in college and fellow teachers. I used slinkys to demonstrate how P and S waves move. First I had students work with partners to demonstrate the different motions between P and S waves. Then I create a 5 slinky model which demonstrates how waves move in all directions. Both these activities were very effective and the students were really intrigued. This model helped them to visualize what happens in the earth's interior as the vibrations travel. I also had students determine the location of an earthquakes center by using this online simulation (http://www.sciencecourseware.com/VirtualEarthquake/VQuakeExecute.html). The only issue was that no one was able to find the epicenter because they made little mistakes while reading the seismogram. I think in the future I print them out so they are easier to read for students.
I wanted to use the 5 slinky model to generate data and have my students graph them but the vibrations moved too quickly and we could not get a time down. Does anyone have suggestions on how we could get around this?
