STEM Disaster

Set of resources linked to disasters

Teacher guidance

Quality AssuredCategory:MathematicsPublisher:Department for Education

This Study Plus unit from the National Strategies asks students to plan the relief aid for a fictitious tsunami along the South American Pacific coast. The project is centred on Concepción, Chile’s second largest urban conurbation. This was the scene of an actual tsunami in 1960, after an earthquake off the Chilean coast.

A variety of facts are to be considered, and then various strategies used to establish how many people may be affected by the disaster, what food, water and shelter are needed and how it could all be transported.

The unit supports curricular targets in fractions, decimals, percentages, and ratio and proportion, and allows the students to solve problems. There are clear cross-curricular links that could be made with geography in the introductory phase.

Quality AssuredCategory:MathematicsPublisher:Department for Education

In this Study Plus unit from the National Strategies, using the subject of global warming, students look at and analyse data to answer the question ‘Is there global warming in the world?’.

In the module students are expected to analyse the data through drawing charts and diagrams and then interpreting the charts.

Students are expected to work in small groups preparing a presentation, using the evidence they have found, to agree or disagree with the statement: ‘Global warming is affecting the climate of the world.’

The unit involves forming hypotheses, analysing, representing and interpreting data.
There are opportunities for links with science (heat, properties of ice and water) and geography (climate, maps).

External link

Water Explorer encourages students aged 8-14 from 11 countries to take bold and powerful action to save our precious water through fun, interactive water saving Missions.

Seismometers are instruments that measure and record motions of the ground, including those of seismic waves generated by earthquakes, nuclear explosions, and other seismic sources. Records of seismic waves allow seismologists to map the interior of the Earth, and locate and measure the strength of these different sources.

A seismograph, or seismometer, is an instrument used to detect and record earthquakes. Generally, it consists of a mass attached to a fixed base. During an earthquake, the base moves and the mass does not. The motion of the base with respect to the mass is commonly transformed into an electrical voltage. The electrical voltage is recorded on paper, magnetic tape, or another recording medium. This record is proportional to the motion of the seismometer mass relative to the earth, but it can be mathematically converted to a record of the absolute motion of the ground. Seismograph generally refers to the seismometer and its recording device as a single

This topic works with government statistics to raise issues about waste recycling. It would work well as a cross curricular topic working with science colleagues to understand both the chemical and the energy issues involved in waste disposal.

This second resource in the Commonwealth Science Class series is centred on how the prevent the spread of infectious diseases and is packed with activity ideas to help your students investigate and explore the subject in more depth.

Before downloading the resource, and to help you get started, why not watch the video with your class?

Mathematicians and scientists use experiments to model what happens in avalanches, so they can understand them better. In this investigation, students will model an avalanche, collect data and display their findings with graphs.

More than a million avalanches happen throughout the world every year. Most fall harmlessly, but the largest can destroy whole towns and kill thousands of people. These projects help us try to understand snow avalanches, using simple experiments to model what happens. These projects were originally developed for a schools' video-conference led by Dr Jim McElwaine, and give students an opportunity to develop and test scientific and mathematical models by making predictions and testing them experimentally.

Mudslides, avalanches and earthquakes have much in common - they involve physical environment which had appeared quite stable and then suddenly become very unstable, often with devastating consequences.

In this game, students play a simple simulation game to investigate what causes equilibrium and instability in systems like these.

Over the past few years the UK has seen unprecedented flood levels across a range of urban areas, including Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Hampshire as well as large areas of Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Environment Agency says:

• Flooding happens naturally and cannot be completely avoided

• Around five million people, in two million properties, live in flood risk areas in England and Wales

• Changes in climate, such as more severe storms and wetter winters, will increase that risk

They estimate that over the next 80 years we will need to spend £22 to £75 billion on flood defences in England and Wales to combat the effects of climate change.

The vast majority of these people live on the edges of the flood risk areas and therefore are unlikely to be in a position of having their houses completely devastated by incoming water. Many people will however, have water that seeps into their homes, and the ability to move water quickly will help them reduce damage.

These activities are designed to give pupils an insight into the relative cost to the environment of travel and to highlight ways in which an individual, or family, can reduce their ‘carbon footprint’.