by Gema Venegas

Larger imageStudents working on their Pangea flip books.

On May 10, 2008, the Los Angeles African American Engineers &Professional Employees Association held the annual Science and Technology Awareness Day at the Exposition Park Community Center in Los Angeles. The Science and Technology Awareness Day is an event held every year where students are invited to participate in engineering and scientific activities. Among some of the sponsors/participants this year were the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, the American Chemical Society and the Southern California Earthquake Center.

SCEC led two earthquake related activities taken from FEMA’s Tremor Troops publication at the event. The first activity was a plate tectonics puzzle, where students got a chance to cut out plate pieces in order to make their own plate puzzle. The second activity involved a flip book showing the story of Pangea.

Larger imageStudents cut out pieces for their plate tectonics puzzle.

Representatives from the Southern California Earthquake Center, Robert de Groot, Gema Venegas, Sara Alegria, and Jennifer Hairston (a SCEC ACCESS intern and USC graduate student in computer science) were present to lead students in the activities. In addition, they shared copies of the Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country publication with students and talked to students about earthquake preparedness. SCEC also distributed posters showing scientific information about the Magnitude 9.0 Sumatra-Andaman Islands Earthquake on December 26, 2004. The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) generously provided posters for this event.

Larger imageFrom left to right – Gema Venegas, Sara Alegria and Jennifer Hairston from SCEC.

Visitors left the event with a better understanding of why earthquakes occur, where they occur and what they can do to prepare themselves for the next earthquake. Most importantly, being a science and technology awareness day, students of various ages learned about research opportunities in earth science and how they personally could play an important role in answering important questions about earthquakes.