Plate Tectonics Lesson Plan
This lesson plan on plate tectonics is a real crowd pleaser because you get to eat the demonstration when you have finished! It is easy to do and it demonstrates the action of a transform fault like the famous San Andreas Fault in California.
Lesson/Demonstration #5b: Transform Boundaries demonstration
Direct Aims:
- To understand what happens to the land at the transform boundaries
- To understand how plates move side by side as well as away from and toward one another
Indirect Aims:
- Preparation for understanding different types of transform faults
Materials:
- Two layered-wafer cookies for each pair of students
- Piece of paper, larger than the wafers, labeled N, S, E, W for the cardinal directions
- Tube of frosting (chocolate or tinted black)
- Geographic Map that shows plate boundaries
Procedure
- Review Lesson 5 in which you defined transform boundaries.
- Lay the cookies side-by-side on the paper in a northwesterly direction. (Cookies represent the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate)
- Spread a line of frosting across the two cookies. (To represent a road.)
- Move the cookie on the left in a northwesterly direction, while moving the cookie on the right in a westerly direction.
- Observe: Do the plates move or stick? Is there sideways motion? What happens along the edges of the plates? What happens to the road?
- Show the students the location of the San Andreas Fault in California. This is a transform Boundary / Fault between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate.
- Students may lay arrows on a globe to demonstrate the direction the plates are moving.
Explanation for the teacher/science behind the work: The transform boundaries occur between plates that are sliding by each other in opposite directions. Transform Faults occur at these locations and there are frequent earthquakes.
Statement: Transform Boundaries are boundaries between plated that are slipping side by side.
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