Glaciers

After doing the experiment Glacial Pressure, write a paragraph explaining how this activity illustrates the process by which glaciers are formed.

After reading the literary selection Ice Sculptures, identify how the author used evidence to support the idea that glaciers leave behind clues telling us they were once there.

Students research at least three sources and write a report to answer one of these five questions: How do glaciers form? How do glaciers move? How do glaciers affect the landscape? Why are glaciers important to our planet? Why are glaciers shrinking, and what could be the possible effects?

Use addition and subtraction to solve glacier word problems, such as those from this worksheet. Example: If a glacier moves 17 miles in 10 years, and then 14 miles in the next 10 years, how many miles has the glacier moved in 20 years?

Solve real-life problems involving glaciers, as in: One side of a mountain is 5,280 feet long. If a glacier were to start at the very top of the mountain and travel 3 feet per year, how long would it take the glacier to reach the bottom of the mountain?

Based on this Glacier Retreat lesson, use NASA data from 1973, 1991, and 2000 to calculate the average rate of glacial retreat per year.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem's solutions to other people.

Sunlight warms Earth's surface.

Examples of Earth's surface could include sand, soil, rocks, water, etc.

Assessment of temperature is limited to relative measures such as warmer/cooler.

Heating or cooling a substance may cause changes that can be observed. Sometimes these changes are reversible, and sometimes they are not.

Different kinds of matter exist and many of them can be solid, liquid, or gas depending on temperature. Matter can be described and classified by its observable properties. Observations could include color, texture, hardness, and flexibility. Different properties are suited to different purposes.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe. An example is the erosion of rocks, which occurs slowly.

Each force acts on one particular object and has both strength and a direction. An object at rest typically has multiple forces acting on it, but they add to give zero net force on the object. Forces that do not sum to zero can cause changes in the object's speed or direction of motion. Gravity is addressed as a force that pulls objects down.

Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.

Scientists record patterns of the weather across different times and areas so that they can make predictions about what kind of weather might happen next.

Examples of data could include average temperature and precipitation, and wind direction.

The locations of mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, ocean floor structures, earthquakes, and volcanoes occur in patterns.

Maps can include topographic maps of Earth's land and ocean floor, as well as maps of the locations of mountains and continental boundaries. Maps can help locate the different land and water features areas of Earth.

Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity help to shape the land, and break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around.

Examples of variables to test could include angle of slope in the downhill movement of water, speed of wind, relative rate of deposition, cycles of freezing and thawing of water, cycles of heating and cooling, and volume of water flow.

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth forces, such as earthquakes.

“Downward” is a local description of the direction that points toward the center of the spherical Earth.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, and air. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

Nearly all of Earth’s available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.

Earth's major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things, including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes.

Examples of factors include human activities (such as fossil fuel combustion and changes in land use) and natural processes (such as changes in incoming solar radiation and volcanic activity). Examples of evidence can include tables, graphs, and maps of global and regional temperatures; atmospheric levels of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane; and natural resource use.

Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase.

Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship.

Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation and crystallization, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land.

Global movements of water and its changes in form are propelled by sunlight, temperature and gravity.

Emphasis is on the ways water changes its state as it moves through the multiple pathways of the hydrologic cycle.

The planet's systems interact over scales that range from microscopic to global in size, and they operate over fractions of a second to billions of years. These interactions have shaped Earth's history and will determine its future.

Water's movements- both on land and underground- cause weathering and erosion, which change the land's surface features and create underground formations.

Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind.

Emphasis is on the processes of melting, crystallization, weathering, deformation, and sedimentation, which act together to form minerals and rocks through the cycling of Earth’s materials.

The geologic time scale interpreted from rock strata provides a way to organize Earth's history.

Emphasis is on how analyses of rock formations and the fossils they contain are used to establish relative ages of major events in Earth's history. Examples of Earth's major events could range from being very recent, such as the last Ice Age, to the very old, such as the formation of Earth.

Ecosystems are dynamic and vary over time. Disruptions to any component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.

Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.