Earthquake Diorama
You can do this project all by yourself. It's one of the sample science projects that shows the destructive force of an earthquake.
You will need the following materials:
1 large illustration board
2 Styrofoam boards of equal size and smaller that the illustration board
2 toy electronic treadmills or two wind-up treadmills
old toy buildings
toy trees
toy cars
paint
paint brushes
modeling clay
Instructions:
If you have the electric treadmill, attach these to the illustration boards about two inches away from each other, facing each other. Electric treadmills are used in some toys. They have a switch which turns the treadmills on and causes it to move.
If you have the wind-up treadmill (the kind some toy trucks use), attach these to the bottom of the Styrofoam boards.
On top of the Styrofoam boards, create a town or city depending on your materials. Just put up the buildings, trees, and cars, and loosely attach them to the Styrofoam. You can use the paint to create roads or grass, and make a landscape out of the modeling clay.
If you have the electric treadmill, place each Styrofoam board on each treadmill. The Styrofoam boards should be just a few centimeters apart from each other. When you turn on the electric treadmills, the Styrofoam boards will hit each other in the way some plates do causing the loosely attached city to move and break, which is what happens in an earthquake.
If you have the wind-up treadmills, wind up the treadmills/ Styrofoam boards and set them up facing each other. The boards will hit each other in the way some plates do causing the loosely attached city to move and break, which is what happens in an earthquake.
Concept Explanation:
There are many sample science projects with earthquakes. This one attempts to show how destructive it can be, and how it can be caused by tectonic plates. Some earthquakes are strong enough to destroy cities and towns. They are caused by the various movements of the tectonic plates of the earth. In this project the tectonic plates are represented by the Styrofoam boards moving towards each other. Some tectonic plates move towards each other (which is what the diorama recreates), move away from each other, or rub against each other. Either movement can cause an earthquake to occur.
