Yes Sir, That's My Baby Glacier!
Summary
Students will create their own glacier, and explore their effect on the land, modeling how they melt, how they move, and erode and deposit sediment. Students will be able to determine and describe isostatic rebound, create and identify common glacial landforms such as moraines, drumlins, erratics, kettle lakes, and striations, and explain the role glaciers play in landscape development and how climate change may impact glaciers and their related features.
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Context
Audience
This activity is ideal for upper middle school and high school earth science classes and introductory geology courses for non-majors.
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
Determine/calculate density and speed rates.
Basic glacier landforms nomenclature.
Basic glacier landforms nomenclature.
How the activity is situated in the course
This is typically done during and near the completion of a unit on glaciers, it is usually done as a lab but takes two or three days to complete, or with undergraduates could be completed within a two to three hour lab section.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
Glacier mechanics and landform development.
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
Analyze and interpret data, development of a physical, hands-on model, compare-contrast analog model and scale, cause and effect.
Other skills goals for this activity
collaborative group learning, measurement using various lab equipment
Description and Teaching Materials
This activity has been described in the November 2015 of NSTA Science Scope.
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27
Yes Sir, That's My Baby Glacier (Microsoft Word 54kB May31 17)
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27
Yes Sir, That's My Baby Glacier (Microsoft Word 54kB May31 17)
Teaching Notes and Tips
Please refer to the Science Scope article that describes this activity, as it lists several teacher and student tips.
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27
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Assessment
Participation and completion of all segments of the lab activity, responses to lab handout questions.
References and Resources
The November 2015 NSTA Science Scope article I wrote with my colleague can guide teachers through the process of this activity.
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/resource/?id=10.2505/4/ss15_039_03_27