Earthquakes

The earthquake on Tuesday night was a pretty thrilling event for the children, (despite the fact that many of them managed to sleep through it!). We have been talking about earthquakes a lot in our learning community, and we have read some information together to try to understand what happened. The children are absolutely bursting with ideas and questions about earthquakes, volcanoes and the structure of the earth.

Things that we think we know about earthquakes and the earth:

• When there are lots of volcanoes in the same place, it can make the earth crack and then the volcanoes explode and it can cause an earthquake.
• Water gets really hot in the ground and the earth goes into this sort of shape/and then the water turns into lava and then it explodes.
• Volcanoes under the sea can make a big wave called a tidal wave which makes a humungus flood. 
• But it’s dangerous to swim in floods. 
• When the plates go together sometimes they stick and they make a really big earthquake. 
• Every 100 years volcanoes happen in Australia. 
• When you look into a volcano and if you feel it shaking, you better get away quickly. 
• When there’s a big earthquake that makes a flood. 
• If there’s a huge volcano under the sea and it explodes it can cause a huge wave and if it goes onto land it will cause a huge flood.
• If you climb up the volcano and if you found a big hole then you have to get away from it because that hole is very, very deep and there’s fire coming from there.

Our questions about earthquakes:

• Why was there an earthquake in Melbourne?
• How/Why is the pressure so strong? How strong is the air that’s pushing up and causing the plates to move? 
• How can a crack be underground? 
• How far down are the cracks? 
• When did the earth form? 
• How can an earthquake tip a car over? 
• Where did the earth come from? 
• How do the plates move together? 
• Why aren’t there any volcanoes in Australia? 
• How do earthquakes happen?