Type “Hawaii” into the search bar of Google Earth and examine the chain of Hawaiian Islands.
On a separate sheet of PAPER please DRAW yourself a MAP of the islands and label the following on your
map (making sure to include the names), which will be used to answer the following questions. Islands to
include: Big Island, Maui, Kauai, Nihoa (23 03 32.79N 161 55 11.94W)
a. Put a North arrow on your map.
b. Label the ages of each of the islands determined by radiometric dating of the lava.
Big Island- 0 (active), Maui – 1.1 million, Kauai- 4.7 million, Nihoa- 7.2 million years
*Note… your map does not need to be to exactly to scale because distances and measurements will be
provided to you. You can print out the island locations from a map on the computer too. You will be
measuring the distances in Google Earth and then noting them on your paper map to help answer the
questions.
c. Place a dot at the center of each island on your paper. Then find the center of each island on Google
Earth and measure on Google Earth the distance between the center of an island and its adjacent island in
centimeters (for example measure the distance between the center of the Big Island and Maui).
d. Look closely at each island in Google Earth and record their maximum elevation in centimeters.
Remember elevation can be found by placing your cursor over a point and reading the elevation on the
lower right of the
image by the latitude and longitude. The elevation will be given in meters. (Hint: tilting the image of the
island will help to find the highest point.
Sample Solution