Year 11 Case Studies

The case study you are making this week is on the volcanic eruption at Mt St Helens, Washington, USA in 1980. Mrs Smith's group need to hand in the work on Tuesday 20th Jan, Mrs Nurton's group on Wednesday 21st Jan.

Useful websites can be found here and here.

Earthquake in China

More bad news from Asia - a magnitude 7.9 earthquake has struck the SW of China. A day after the quake, the death toll stands at 12 000, but this figure is likely to rise. You can read about this disaster here and here. There are some pictures from China here - the BBC warns that you may find some of them disturbing.

There is an interesting article here about the contrasting responses to this disaster and the cyclone in Burma.

Earthquake in Japan

Today, a significant earthquake hit the island of Honshu in Japan. Tsunami warnings were issued, and a nuclear power station was damaged. Read the story here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6901213.stm

and look at some pictures here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6900355.stm

Video footage of the quake can be seen here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6900000/newsid_6900200?redirect=6900209.stm&news=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1

Italy and volcanoes!

How topical! Year 7 were looking at Italy and we found that Mount Etna had been erupting today. Click here to go to a BBC webpage where you can click on a video of today's eruption.

We then got talking about Mount Vesuvius and I promised some more information so here goes.....

Find out what happened to these people by using the links below:

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/pompeii/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/pompeii_portents_01.shtml



http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/pompeii.html not only tells you what happened, but there is a quiz and you can build your own virtual volcano.

Earthquake hits Kent!

An earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale has hit Kent today (Saturday 28th April 2007) at 8.19 this morning. The map (from BBC News) shows that experts believe the epicentre to have been a few miles off the coast in the English Channel. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) measured the quake at 4.7, although the BBC news website states it measured 4.3 on the Richter scale.

Look at the following links for more information:
Earthquake strikes part of Kent from BBC News
Eyewitness accounts on the BBC News website
Lots of pictures and more details of the damage here

A huge crack in cliffs at Barton-on Sea which could cause a massive landslide could be linked to the earthquake. Read about it here.

A little bit of help for year 8 with their homework....

Year 8 need to do some research for their title page homework. The following links might help you....

http://scign.jpl.nasa.gov/learn/plate.htm is more information about plate tectonics

The map here http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ will show you where all the recent earthquakes have occurred. This one will too: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

Information about the 10 biggest earthquakes on the Guardian site at http://www.guardian.co.uk/tsunami/story/0,15671,1380312,00.html

Volcano world at http://volcano.und.edu/ has lots of information!

Plate tectonics

Year 8 are starting 'The Restless Earth' as a topic in the Summer Term.

Click on the link below for a lesson on plate tectonics and different plate boundaries.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/learnpremium/tectonic/Learningobjectives/Default.htm

Click on http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/kids.php for lots of information and activities.

Large earthquake hits Japan

An large earthquake of magnitude 7.1 struck off the west coast of Japan's largest island, Honshu on Sunday 25th March 2007. A tsunami warning was also issued. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6492473.stm for more information and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6492931.stm for pictures from the earthquake.

Mt St Helen's

For year 10 who have just been studying 'Unstable Plate Margins' have a look at this clip which shows the sideways blast from the 1980 eruption.