Teaching kids about earthquakes and tsunamis

We are all so saddened by the recent earthquake tragedy in Haiti.  -- And it must be heartwrenching for those waiting to hear from loved ones.

From Red Cross: There has been an outpouring of support from the public. To help, people can make an unrestricted donation to the International Response Fund at www.redcross.org or by calling 1-800-REDCROSS (1-800-733-2767).

The public can also help by texting “Haiti” to 90999 to send a $10 donation to the Red Cross, through an effort backed by the U.S. State Department. Funds will go to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

As a human community we will surely reflect on what we can do to help Haitians, including an awareness of their longstanding conditions of poverty. 

Could such conditions left their physical infrastructure vulnerable?  I've heard Haitian supporters talk about how Haiti was not built to within this kind of disaster.

Hopefully we will be thinking long and hard about the human and social aspects of this disaster, how to prevent this, and how to support Haitians.

In the face of tragedy we seek information to try to help make sense of things.  While we might not be able to ever understand why such tragedies occur, we can try to learn and understand more about the physical aspects of hurricanes and tsunamis.

Here are some K-12 sites that use real-time data to learn about the natural disasters, locate them on maps, discover their causes and impacts and how to predict them.

A Study of Earthquakes and Plate Tectonics

A Study of the Large Unusual Waves