Shake, Rattle, and Roll! Are you ready for this? It’s the earthquake challenge and jiggly jello…… and, boy do I have a story to tell you!

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Here’s My Story… and I’m Sticking to it!

This is a challenge I wanted to try for a long time. I thought a jello base as the shake table was a great idea!

So, first I needed some pans of jello. That seemed easy. I bought pans at the dollar store and real jello because I thought generic jello might not mix right and then I’d have 8 pans of runny, gummy gunk.  

I decided to go on a Sunday afternoon and make all these pans in my classroom. I mean, seriously, how could I have made all this at home and then transported it to school? A better questions is why I needed eight pans of jello.   

Well, I usually have 7 groups and I figured every group needed a pan. And I better make an extra because somebody always spills something. Anyway, I made 8 pans. But they needed to be refrigerated. Oops, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It turned out that the mini-fridge that goes with our portable, rolling kitchen cart was available and I just rolled it right into my lab. And, miracle of all miracles, I was able to use plastic trays and stack all those jello pans. And, a bonus was that my lab smelled like fruity, tooty for three days. Just sayin’…

Did all of the structures work?

Nope, some of them collapsed.  This earthquake challenge was really fun (after I worked out all of the kinks!)

Some tips for you:   

• YOU ONLY NEED ONE PAN OF THE JIGGLY STUFF!
• Have paper towels on hand and wet wipes cause kids are going to touch the stuff just because they want to make sure it’s real jello.
• At least twelve of them will ask if we are going to eat the jello.
• At least one group is going to make some wonky something that won’t stand up on its own, much less stand up in jello.
• They will LEARN something from this- as silly as it seems to be.

We spent time talking about building codes and creating structures that will move with an earthquake, but not collapse.

UPDATE: I have tried this earthquake challenge every year and recently added a new and improved shake table! The resource now contains directions for several different structures and the two shake tables!