Doll House Experiment For the people in residential areas, earthquake preventative measures are, in general, do‐it‐yourself information such as fixing furniture to the wall. However, the fact that a bookshelf can be very dangerous during an earthquake is relentlessly ignored. The aim of the doll house experiment is educating people about prevention of earthquake damages through hunting possible hazards inside their living areas. General setup for the experiment To perform this experiment, a shake table which can generate a frequency between 0‐10 Hz is required. The group used a modified version of a shake table used in UCIST. On the shake table, two doll houses are placed made of aluminum plates and timber. In one of the shake tables, furniture is fixed whereas in the other doll house furniture is not. The movable parts used in the demonstration are wardrobe, nightstand, bed, water heater, chimney and puppets. The shake table is driven by slowly increasing the intensity of a sinusoidal wave simulating an earthquake. As frequency increases, furniture starts to fall down. The experiment is terminated after complete collapse of furniture is observed. Following, main idea of the demonstration is explained and importance of prevention of earthquake damages at home is emphasized. A moment from demonstration: The children are observing the experiment curiously.
Kind assistance of Dr. Phillip Gould is greatly acknowledged. This demonstration could not be achieved without his support.