earthquakes

Volcanoes often occur at the boundary where two tectonic plates meet. In New Zealand, the Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ), extending from Mt Ruapehu through Rotorua to...

Discover our Planet Earth and Beyond resources for NZ Curriculum levels 1 and 2 and find out why New Zealand is home to so many earthquakes...

New Zealand has volcanoes stretching from the Bay of Islands down to Otago. Many of our volcanoes are extinct (no longer active), some are dormant (not...

In this activity, students make sandwiches to investigate tectonic plate boundaries and how they move during an earthquake. There are also non-food related alternatives for exploring...

The Earth is an enormous place. There is so much that we don’t yet know about what happens on the surface of the Earth, so how...

We live in a very exciting country. A day’s drive in a car can take us from snowy mountains, past geysers and hot mud pools to...

The definition of a scientist is a person who studies or practises any of the sciences. Scientists find out about the unknown and the known. They...

Uncovering our explosive past How do volcanoes work? Where do they form? And what does this mean for the people that live around them? This resource...

In this activity, students make a simple model of a cinder cone by pouring a granular material such as fine dry sand, pea-size gravel or rice...

In this activity, students work in small groups to select a 6-member disaster response team from a set of 12 biography cards. By the end of...

In this activity, students select items to include in a home disaster kit in case of emergency and calculate how much food and water they will...

The city of Auckland is built on a volcanic field. There are 50 volcanoes within an area of 1,000 square kilometres, forming the hills, lakes and...

The Earth rumbles and a hiss of steam issues from the top of Mt Ruapehu. Are these two events related? Is the earthquake caused by the...

Scientists use a range of different methods to learn more about volcanoes. A volcanologist may start by conducting fieldwork, collecting rocks and samples, and then move...

The high temperatures (900°C) and extremely high pressures that occur in the mantle layer of the Earth are enough to melt rock. The high pressure changes...

Everyone knows what a volcano looks like – isn’t it a steep-sided cone with wisps of ash coming from the top, just like Rangitoto, White Island,...

Andesite is a type of rock that is thought to form on the edge of tectonic plates in a subduction zone. The subduction zone is where...

New Zealand’s biggest city is built on an active volcanic field. What risks does this mean for the inhabitants, and how should these risks be managed?...

Volcanoes are exciting. They can erupt spectacularly, throwing molten rock into the air in pyrotechnic displays that are simply stunning. Did you know that one of...

Earthquakes are a fact of life in New Zealand, but we still don’t understand exactly what triggers them. Microscopes are some of the many tools that...

About 14,000 earthquakes are recorded in and around New Zealand every year. Canterbury’s 7.1 and Kaikōura's 7.8 magnitude earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks show the constant threat...

In this activity, students explore tectonic movements called slow slips. They plot and interpret a graph using data from an actual event in New Zealand. By...

In this activity, students use a physical model to investigate the effectiveness of different properties for base isolators. By the end of this activity, students should...

In this activity, students use data on historical earthquakes to identify when and where they occurred and make predictions about future earthquakes. By the end of...