Thursday, September 11, 2008

Tech Assignment #6 - Simulating Earthquakes

Yesterday Japan and Indonesia had earthquakes. Earthquakes are powerful natural events and students will simulate how they work.

Student Directions:
1. Go to the following link to to launch the website:
http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/quakes/interactives/makeaquake.html

You will use this website to discover where and how to create buildings that have a better chances of surviving earthquakes. You will keep track of your data on MS Word and creating a chart that has this information:

Simulation# Location(Ground) Construction(Prevention) Magnitude Aftermath(Summary)

2. Using the online simulator, you will simulate 10 different earthquakes. Change the locations of the buildings, the earthquake-proofing building constructions, and the magnitudes of the earthquakes. Make sure you keep track of your data that you create using the columns Mr. De Maria gave you as a guideline. The aftermath column should contain a summary of the outcome of your earthquake.

3. Did you find that the location of the building makes a difference? Did you notice if certain types of earthquake-proofing construction worked better than others? Did you notice how much the size of the earthquake affected the survival of the building? Record your findings in the "aftermath" column. You may want to write all your information a paper first before creating your MS Word chart.

4. Put all your information on your MS Word Chart and email me the results. Don't forget your name and assignment number in the subject box.

Play with the website until it starts working for you. You have 3 class periods to get your results.Your information you find may one day change how we can survive an earthquake. Good Luck

Sunday, September 7, 2008

"A Melting Pot"

We as americans are made up of different nationalities. We are called the Melting pot society, the society that is blended and unique from the rest of the world. Most times we get along, but occasionally disagreements do flare up.
We have two Presidential candidates running this year. They both come from different backgrounds, different economic status's and different political party's but what makes this so great is in the end we are all "Americans."
Attached you is the first quarter 8th grade US History project. This assignment is a collage but a collage that blends every aspect of our past and present cultures into one board.

1st Quarter Project
U.S. History
Mr. DeMaria

Students are to cut out pictures for the following categories:

People, Places and or Things.

Using a poster board the size of 20x30 or larger. Students are to create a collage and a title for their project. It can be one category or more. You must have a title on your poster.

Please review your handout for the rubric.