Who Cut the Cheese? | Free Earthquake Triangulation Pre-Lab

The Description

Earthquake triangulation sounds straightforward right up until a student has to juggle lag time, map scale, circles, and a compass—and somehow remember where the pointy end goes. So before we introduce actual seismic stations, we're solving a much more urgent classroom mystery: Who cut the cheese?

Yes. It's a fart mystery. Students use the timing of a suspicious sound and the unfortunate arrival of a smell to practice the mechanics of triangulation. The situation is deliberately ridiculous, but the skills underneath are exactly the ones they'll need when the cartoon noses become seismic stations.

What Students Will Do

• Use arrival-time evidence from three fictional witnesses to understand a simplified lag time.

• Convert the given lag-time values into distances with the activity's intentionally made-up rule.

• Use a compass and map scale to draw circles around three witness locations.

• Identify where the circles intersect and justify which suspect is responsible.

• Try the process again in a follow-up quiz before transferring the procedure to earthquake data.

Why This Resource Is Different

I first built this as a scaffold for students who were getting buried beneath too many new triangulation skills at once. Then I discovered that even confident science students benefited from learning the compass-and-circle process before wrestling with real P- and S-wave evidence.

The science is intentionally simplified, not misrepresented as actual wave behavior. And when students finally locate the culprit, you've already taught the hard-to-see mechanical steps without making the first earthquake lab feel like a compass obstacle course.

What's Included?

• Who Cut the Cheese? student investigation with three scenarios and cartoon maps.

• Complete teacher answer key and modeling support.

• Student quiz and answer key.

• Step-by-step graphic organizer for the triangulation procedure.

The Details

Grades: approximately 6–9; particularly useful before a ninth-grade Earth Science epicenter lab. Suggested time: about one class period (approximately 45 minutes).

Materials: compass, map scale, and printed student pages. This is a conceptual pre-lab with fictional sound-and-smell data—not a real seismic-wave simulation.

Free digital resource. The current Wix listing identifies PDF materials and an editable PowerPoint student file.