In this activity, students study damage descriptions from earthquakes and allocate a Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) number.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
- understand the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale
- look at damage descriptions of historic New Zealand earthquakes and allocate Modified Mercalli Intensity scale numbers to them
- understand the difference between magnitude and intensity of earthquakes.
Download the Word file (see link below) for:
- introduction/background
- what you need
- what to do
- discussion questions
- simplified New Zealand Modified Mercalli Intensity scale
- information about 6 New Zealand earthquakes.
Related content
Discover more about Plate tectonics.
Related activities
The teaching resource Earthquakes New Zealand features seven activities designed to help students develop an understanding about earthquakes in New Zealand, including why we get them and how we measure them. The four below are particularly relevant to this activity.
- Earthquakes past and future – students use data on historical earthquakes to identify when and where they occurred and make predictions about future earthquakes.
- Shaky New Zealand – students use maps to plot a graph of earthquakes under New Zealand to show the shape of the North Island subduction zone and compare this to the distribution of earthquakes in the South Island.
- Plates and quakes – students take on the roles of seismologists, vulcanologists and geographers, using maps to look for patterns in the worldwide distribution of earthquakes, volcanoes and topographic features.
- New Zealand plate boundary models – students make and/or observe two 3D moving models of the different tectonic plate boundaries under the North and South Islands representing the North Island subduction zone and the South Island Alpine Fault.
Useful links
See the New Zealand Modified Mercalli (MM) intensity scale on the GeoNet website.
Watch this animated video which graphically compares the relative 'sizes' of a selection of major earthquakes in the 20th and 21st centuries by their moment magnitudes. Perspective: a graphical comparison of earthquake energy release, is from the US NWS Pacific Warning Centre.
Acknowledgement
This activity was developed for the Earthquake Commission (EQC), now known as the Natural Hazards Commission, and has been kindly provided for use on the Science Learning Hub.