The next unit in our geology studies was Weathering & Erosion. We did a ton of things with this so, rather than one massively long post, I'm going to break it into sections according to subject and activity within the unit. This post will be photos of most of the hands-on experimenting we did.
The first experiment was on weathering. We filled a glass jar with warm water, put a lid on it, sealed it in a zipper bag (for safety), wrapped it in newspaper, and put it in the freezer for a few days. We actually had to do this FOUR times because the first three I was using a canning jar and as the water expanded it just popped the lid off. We could see that the water had expanded, but it wouldn't crack the jar because for some reason the lid could come off and give way to the ice. The last time I used an empty pickle jar with a different type lid and it worked like a charm.
Half the fun of learning about erosion is, well, eroding stuff. A pan full of dirt and rocks and leaves allows kids to see what a channel of water can do, and also allows them to try to manipulate the results with strategic rock placing; covering a mound of mud with leaves shows them how helpful vegetation is in preventing erosion.
When someone flooded his pan and the water ran over, we got to see first hand the deposition of soil elsewhere after it has been eroded from its original place.
Then, when the "regular" experimenting was over, the kids got even more creative... and enjoyed getting their hands dirty.
Even the clean up was fun!
This next experiment compared the erosive powers of water, wind and ice.
We demonstrated how waterfalls form.
And plunge pools.
We made mini glaciers and took them to a hill at a park. This would have worked much better had it been a warmer day, but we adapted. We still saw the carving power of ice as well as a little of the movement and deposition of glaciers.
We then took them home and created a "mountain" to finish watching them melt and move and deposit. Each mini glacier melted and reacted to gravity a little differently from the others.
We also used a rock tumbler to polish stones, and did some cave experiments (another post).
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