"Build Your Own Seismograph" Lab
Here we see results from a "build your own seismograph" lab
in a science course for students in the Lynch School of Education
at Boston College. The course fulfills the Boston College science
Core requirement, and is designed to engage pre-service teachers
in the doing of science and to improve their understanding science
content. To introduce the students to the AS1 seismograph used
for classroom recording of earthquakes from around the world, the
students were asked to design and build their own seismograph based
on first principles. After a short lecture on the history of seismographs
and how they work, the students were given various items that might
be useful for making an instrument that could measure vibrations,
such as: springs, rubber bands, clay, marbles, washers, paper plates
and cups, pencils, pieces of wood, and tape. The assignment was
to use any combination of the available items to build an instrument
that measues motion. After an hour of designing and constructing
their own seismograph, the students were asked to describe their
seismograph and how it measures motion. The pictures show examples
of the students' seismographs from this exercise.
The course dedscribed here is team taught by professors Alan Kafka
(geophysics) and Mike Barnett (science education), and the pictures
are from a lab that was team taught by graduate students Eugene
Szymanski (geophysics) and Anne Pfitzner (science education).
Contributed by Alan Kafka, Boston College |
