Flexible building materials allow a structure to sway without breaking during an earthquake

Glass, bricks, and concrete are some of the most common building materials, but they are not necessarily the best when an earthquake hits, because they will break or slide past each other when they experience lateral movement, causing walls to collapse. To combat this, engineers reinforce buildings with steel rods, which are very strong, but also flexible [7]. This flexibility is important because it allows a building to sway side-to-side without breaking. It’s very easy to bend a paperclip in half without breaking it, but a toothpick will snap if you bend it in half—the more flexible material can withstand a higher lateral load. Ideally, a tall building will sway smoothly with the movement of an earthquake without breaking, and a flexible steel frame will allow that motion to occur [9].

In the interest of maximizing the usefulness of the guide to the instructor, I strove to explain all of the concepts I was illustrating at a high level, while still avoiding unnecessarily complex technical jargon. As such, I tailored my word choice to be easily understood by a decently-informed adult audience who may not necessarily have a background in STEM. In my paragraph (shown to the left), I explained that “[g]lass, bricks and concrete…will break or slide past each other when they experience lateral movement”. Although the word “shear” (in its engineering context) would appropriately describe the breakage that I was relating in that sentence, I used the phrase “slide past each other”, as it clearly and simply explains the action and effects of shear force without invoking the more technical word. An instructor could also use this phrasing to easily explain the concept to children.

​I also strove to include simple and relatable real-life examples of the concepts I was illustrating in my descriptions, in order to both explain the concept to the instructor and provide him or her with an example that could be used while presenting to children. Thus, in my first paragraph I explained that steel could withstand a higher lateral load than wood due to its flexibility by comparing the experience of bending a steel paperclip in half to bending a toothpick in half.

Buildings isolated from their bases can slide over the ground without breaking

If you put a toy car on a sheet of paper, then quickly slide the paper out from under the car, it will slide slightly, but not as far as the distance you slid the paper. The wheels of the car isolate, or separate, the car body from the motion of the paper below it [9]. The same principle applies to a building in an earthquake—if the whole building “block” is isolated from the ground, it can independently slide back and forth over the moving ground instead of sliding back and forth with the moving ground (and potentially breaking) [9]. This concept is known as base isolation. In old structures, this was accomplished by constructing a building that could slide, as a unit, over a wide, smooth, and very heavy (and therefore more stable) stone foundation. Today, cutting-edge earthquake-resistant buildings are “floated” above their foundations on strong pads that are surrounded by steel and rubber layers, which let the pad flex horizontally [7]. Thus, the foundation of the building can move without causing the building itself to move much, as with the toy car on the paper.

In my second paragraph (shown to the left), I explained the concept of “base isolation” by relating it to the example of quickly pulling a sheet of paper out from under a toy car. Both the intended audience (adult instructors) and their subsequent audience (children ages 8-10) will be able to relate to each of these examples, as they are the sort of experiences that occur through play. Because our LEGO® build project was developed for the Terre Haute Bricks 4 Kidz location, it is likely that most of the people (both instructors and children) who will interact with this project will be from the Midwest and thereby have little or no experience with earthquakes or the sometimes-complicated structures and concepts associated with building earthquake-resistant structures. Thus, I can better communicate this material to the audience by connecting it to common, shared experiences.