What principles of building construction are important for helping a building to survive an earthquake? In this exhibit, visitors can build a building, place it on the earthquake shake table, select an actual historic earthquake and observe how well the building withstands the tremors. An accelerometer, attached to the building, provides quantitative data that is displayed as a graph on a computer touch screen. A slow motion video replay of the building during the earthquake is also viewable on the screen. Visitors will learn about the importance of various building principles as they adjust their buildings to withstand stronger and stronger earthquakes.

 

The foundation of this exhibit is a two-axis shake table. Using recorded data from recent earthquakes, the table moves in a realistic fashion. There are five earthquakes of varying magnitude available for visitors to choose. The museum can also make their own earthquake files using an Excel spreadsheet. Designed in collaboration with Liberty Science Center.