Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,
Our 4th grader ran the experiment "Set Your Table for a Sweet and Sticky Earthquake." In the experiment, houses were made with sugar cubes and peanut butter. The houses were placed in various soils on the shake table and then shaken. We thought that the bedrock (actually play-doh) would perform the best and sand (cornstarch and water) the worst. However, bedrock broke the walls of the houses down the worst (total of 3 walls down). Sand broke 1 wall down, and the gravel and alluvium had no walls fall down.

We repeated the experiment because we thought maybe we used to much peanut butter and made the houses too sturdy. On the second round we used less peanut butter but got similar results. Is this to be expected? The research we've done said that soft soils have worse earthquakes than rock.

Any reason to explain the results we've gotten? The science fair is this week and we've run out of time to run more experiments. We are trying to write up the report right now. HELP!!!

We performed some of the experiment yesterday. I think our houses are too sturdy. We gave up for the night with only one wall falling on the sand, but it took 37 seconds. The experiment only requires 20 seconds of shaking. Instead of # of eall falling, we may look gor jow long it takes for structure to collapse and measure time differences. We will try again later today. Maybe allowing the peanut butter to set overnight will make a difference? I don't know. I look forward to any posts that can help with this experiment. Our display board is due Wed, Jan . 30. Good luck!

Gigitexas,
I'm glad that I'm not the only one having problems. Our houses were allowed to dry for a day or two before we shook them. Maybe they do need to be shaken immediately. I like your idea of looking at the times that it takes to collapse. We need to come up with some answers because our results are due this week.

Good Luck!