On the National Geographic website, I found an interactive and informative activity called Forces of Nature. Not only can you read up on tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes, watch videos, view pictures, and learn about different case studies, but you can also improve your knowledge by causing a tornado, building a volcano, spinning off a hurricane, and setting off an earthquake. For example, to trigger an earthquake, you choose the ground type (bedrock, landfill, fault zone) that the building stands on, and the magnitude (low, high) of the earthquake, set it off, and see how the building responds to the earthquake. If a high magnitude earthquake occurs on a fault zone, for example, there will be significant displacement—sometimes the building may collapse partially or entirely. This earthquake activity in particular reminded me of our discussion in class about the Mercalli Scale that measures the damage the earthquake does. Check out all the Forces of Nature and play around with the conditions to create either a moderate or deadly disturbance.
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/forces-of-nature/
Really cool interactive website, which helps you learn the conditions needed for a tornado. For example, air mass 1 had to be cold and dry air, mass 2 had to be warm and moist, pressure needed to be falling, and winds needed to be variable. The webiste gave you a few options to tinker with, but the simulation would only happen under the right conditions. There is also a map, which has a timeline showing tornados from 1900 to 2000. Last of all there was a tab for case studies, which was loaded with data about different tornados. Overall this is a very interesting and informing website.
This a great interactive website that helps you understand the conditions needed for a Tornado. On the website you are given a few different scenarios to play around with to try and create a tornado. The conditions needed for a tornado is for air mass 1 to be cold and dry, air mass 2 has to be warm and moist, the pressure has to be falling, and the winds have to variable. Once the conditions are meet then a tornado will occur. I thought this was a great way to learn the conditions needed for a tornado. Also the website had some good maps and other data about past tornados and where they occured. Overall this a great interactive website.
This is one of the better interactive websites that I have visited. It really allows its visitors to understand the different conditions needed to create natural disasters of various magnitudes. It also shows you the outcomes of such disasters. I fiddled with the volcano-creating tool and was impressed that I could change everything from amount dissolved gasses in the volcano pre-eruption, to its the silica content, as well as its type- shield, composite, cinder cone, or lava dome. This is a great site for someone who is interested in learning about the way different natural disasters have an impact on their surrounding.
This website is a really cool and interactive way to understand the conditions necessary to produce natural disasters. It’s so much easier to understand what is necessary for things such as tornados to occur. Whenever we see tornado warnings or watches, it can be confusing as to what the climate is like that is making it favorable for these things to happen. Being able to play with different aspects and see if certain scenarios will produce these types of systems and destructors, is very cool. This is an awesome website that could be used as a great teaching tool as well!
This page was extreme interesting and very user friendly. I quite enjoyed playing with these different types of volcanoes and the causes of tornadoes. I think I picked up a lot looking at the interactive maps too. It was very informative with its simplistic interface and really cogent in its descriptions.
This is a great tool to show how the different forces are formed and has great information about them. It has great simulations and is very interesting to see how devastating these events can be.