Students will discover concepts related to how buildings respond during earthquakes in this hands on activity. Students are encouraged to build a multistory scale building using K’nex ‘The world’s most creative construction and building toys’. The structures will then be placed on a shake table that will reproduce the ground motion that occurred during the magnitude 6.7 earthquake at Northridge California in 1994. Through this hands-on demonstration students will discover how the stiffness and mass of a structure affect its earthquake response, investigate natural frequency of a structure, and learn concepts related to designing structures to survive earthquakes.
Dr. Matthew R. Eatherton is an Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. His research group is developing new structural systems that have enhanced seismic performance, making existing structural systems more efficient in earthquake prone areas, and improving our understanding of how earthquake ground motions affect structural response.
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