Volcanoes and types of lava

Surely every child loves to learn about volcanoes! The rice crispie volcano models are always a hit.

Stratovolcano inside

Viscosity of lava—the amount of gases each type will dissolve determines that lava's characteristics.

Frosting island chain?? Or cornstarch and water demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaKMlAawumE

Viscosity levels of lava: blowing bubbles, sliding down a slope (milk vs corn syrup)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwR64Zqov3k eruptions

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0DQ23G8NS/ref=atv_sr_fle_c_Tn74RA_14_1_14?sr=1-14&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B0DQ25V2H7&qid=1752458813444 documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNGUdObDoLk volcanoes 101

Iceland volcano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95wvk34Pi2Q 

Underwater volcano https://www.mombrite.com/underwater-volcano-experiment/

Mt. Vesuvius: https://www.howitworksdaily.com/pompeii-how-are-casts-of-the-dead-created/

Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Floods, Tsunamis

Links:

Some of our previous activities: https://nielsonschool.blogspot.com/2013/12/tornadoes-hurricanes-convection.html

Make a levee in dirt https://levees.sec.usace.army.mil/levee-basics/how-levees-work/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yNoy4H2Z-o flood risk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBivwxBgdPQ why rivers move

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ZLyzByj98 hydraulic flume—structures in rivers

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yNoy4H2Z-o coastal defenses and flood risk

Convection currents in a tub

Turbulence as the currents mix

Cold and hot water separating into layers

We got out the tornado bottles, of course.

"Underwater volcano" erupting

Yellowstone Mini Unit Study

I specifically planned our Geology Unit to take place right before our trip to Yellowstone because I knew it would be generally applicable, but before we went, I wanted to zero in on some specific geologic (and other) highlights of Yellowstone itself. So we had this little Yellowstone mini-unit in the week and a half before we left. 

I am generally a great advocate of learning about a place before you go there (it makes traveling so much more fun and meaningful!) but this time along with the many children's books we checked out from the library, I checked out this book for myself:

I read the first chapter and then decided maybe Death in Yellowstone was NOT a book one should read before visiting Yellowstone! :)

Here is my Pinterest board for the Yellowstone Unit.

Here's an interesting article about the magma chamber under Yellowstone

Here's a short video about Norris Geyser Basin (my favorite part of Yellowstone on our trip!)

Bison or buffalo?

Here's a cool way to build your own geyser. This works a lot like a real geyser works (not the Mentos-and-coke reaction people sometimes call a "geyser")

Video about Geysers from the National Park Service

This video explains how the rangers predict the eruptions of Old Faithful—and here's a chart to help you do the same thing

A rare cold-water geyser in Utah! The pressure in this geyser is caused by natural carbon dioxide gas in the ground. I wish we'd known about it when we were in Green River recently.

Here's an activity to help you learn about fumaroles

And of course we had to do a geyser bottle activity! The children insisted. :) We used alka-seltzer tablets for ours. You can feel the pressure on your hand before letting go!

Erosion, Mountains, Rivers, Canyons

It's hard when posting about this subject, as it was when teaching it, to sort things into discrete subjects. Erosion and weathering are inextricably linked with canyon formation, and mountains and plate tectonics go together, but erosion goes with mountains too, and you can't separate rivers and water erosion. I'll do my best to place related topics in the same post, but if you need more ideas, you can check the tags at the bottom of the post too.

We did several small activities to demonstrate water erosion and weathering. We poured a small stream of water into a pan filled with sediment, then inclined the pan and watched how the water moved. We could see the gradual wearing of a channel, as well as the spreading out of the water into as it slowed or the slope decreased. We talked about deltas and alluvial fans (here is a page with related activities), as well as meanders and oxbow lakes.

Next we observed the effects of wave erosion on coastlines. We buried several cylinders of clay (representing layers of harder rock) in a pile of sand (the softer rock). Then we filled the rest of the pan with water and gently rocked the pan back and forth to make waves:

As you can see, the waves gradually picked up the sediment on the coastline and deposited it farther out, leaving a smoothed-out coastline and exposing the rock stacks. Some of the stacks were even left standing alone in the water. We've seen lots of examples of these types of stacks when we go to the beach (Haystack Rock in Oregon, for example). Some even form arches.

We watched the carving action of water as it runs down a channel. We formed several "canyons" in the yard, and saw that the river deposits sediments downstream in deltas as well. This is an even better way to observe meanders, as a slope evens out.

And of course we made play-doh mountains of various sorts: fold mountains, fault-block mountains, volcanic mountains, etc.

You can find several other erosion and weathering activities at the bottom of this post.

Here are some illustrations of anticlines and synclines.

You can also see examples of mountains in the Plate Tectonics post.

Here's a cute landforms flipbook to make.

Fossils and Fossil Mountain Field Trip

I always thought that no REGULAR person could ever find a fossil. I had gone on "fossil collecting" field trips as a child, but nobody ever found any real fossils. If one DID find a real fossil, I thought, it would never be one of those perfect specimens where you can tell what organism made it, but only one so hard to distinguish it might as well be a regular old rock.

Well…I didn't know about Fossil Mountain before. It is CLEAR out in the West Desert, away from everywhere, but it's one of the best places to find fossils in the country! Here's some more information about it. I was still skeptical before we went, and I kept warning the children that we might not find anything. But we DID. We found so many things! It was so much fun. You are allowed to collect from the ground and the washes and even the mountainsides, but I think you just aren't allowed to chisel anything out. Because we were carrying a baby in a backpack and didn't feel like doing much climbing, we mostly stayed down in the washes, looking for fragments. We found plenty to keep us happy down there!

There are several other fossil collecting sites in this (general) area too, but we didn't have time to try any of them out. There are also a couple places you can pay to collect.

Such a desolate place! But beautiful. I love our high deserts.

We saw a bald eagle with some prey actually in his talons! When we drove by, he dropped it in surprise. I hope it was a little bunny that got away. :)

We gave Teddy a rock to hold and he was SO HAPPY. He called it his "Rah" and he loved it deeply.

Fossil shell!

A lot of the rocks were just COVERED with fossils, like this one. Amazing. And most of these are 500 million years old. Can you even imagine?!

Good example of a mold and a cast. (Here is a very good explanation of types of fossils and which is which, if you tend to get them mixed up. :))

Trilobite!

Another trilobite.

Some of our interesting finds. We don't even know what all of these are. Perhaps some lava bombs?

Fish

Shells/Brachiopods

Ammonites

Trilobites

We did a bunch of dinosaur and fossil activities I'm not listing here, because they're so easy to find online. :) But we did repeat our jello permineralization activity shown here, and since I was teaching the "Digging in the Past" adventure for Cub Scouts, I also made these cute little "dinosaur eggs" for the Cubs one day. We put these dinosaur skeletons inside and they were quite fun.

Igneous Rock

We have done a lot with rocks and the rock cycle before, so we didn't go all-out with it this time. There are tons of fun activities to do, though—igneous fudge, the chocolate rock cycle, and geologic brownie sundaes, to name a few. :) This one is similar to the "igneous sugar" activity we've done before, and demonstrates how crystal formation is aided by greater periods of time and warmer temperatures.

Sugar that cools very quickly forms very small crystals, or no crystals at all. To demonstrate, you melt sugar with a little water in a pan until it is just golden brown. Then pour the molten sugar in a very thin layer onto a pan you've had in the freezer. The sugar will cool almost immediately into this smooth, glassy substance, similar to the way obsidian or volcanic glass forms.

It's really quite beautiful.

On the other hand, if you make a supersaturated sugar solution that will cool very slowly (put it in a tall jar or glass, with a lid if possible), the crystals will have time to grow in a much larger and more definite form.

Like this. Ours took days and days to cool, so be patient! :)

This was a demonstration of how different types of magma flow at different speeds. The viscosity of magma affects what types of volcanoes will form in a particular location. We talked about this more during our volcano unit.

Earthquakes and liquefaction

I feel like we've talked about earthquakes a billion times, but (to my children at least) it never seems to get old! :)

This time we did a liquefaction demonstration. You fill up a big container with sand, then stir in water until the sand is quite saturated. This represents your groundwater. You can also add blocks to represent buildings, for dramatic effect. :)

Then you shake your container vigorously. The sand becomes suspended in the water, and the area is temporarily liquefied. You can read more about it here.

Plate Tectonics, Composition of Earth

We made these books to show the composition of earth: core, inner and outer mantle, and crust. We got the idea here (scroll down), and there's another cute option here. The children quite liked sewing the binding down the middle—they were so surprised at the idea of sewing on paper! :)

Somewhere (where??) we got the idea to use graham crackers on top of peanut butter to model the way the tectonic plates move over the mantle. We used these models to demonstrate the types of faults and plate boundaries. Above, a divergent plate boundary (note the magma welling up in the center to form new crust).

If you take an eye-dropper and wet the graham crackers along the edges, and then push together very slowly, you get a very nice convergent plate boundary (and some fold mountains).

Plate subduction. The lower plate slowly melts and returns to the magma from whence it came.

Because we are nothing if not thorough, we also modeled this process with two pieces of Milky Way bar. This worked better in some ways because it showed how widespread the faulting can be at a plate boundary. It's not usually just a simple uplift in one spot, forming one mountain range. There are cracks and faults in other areas throughout the crust as well.

Someone made a very nice mantle plume which then seeped up between plates to make a volcano. :)

And, lastly, our marshmallow earth models: cut a slit in a marshmallow and insert an M&M candy (represents the inner and outer core of the earth). The marshmallow is the squishy mantle. Dip the marshmallow in melted chocolate and let it harden to form a crust. Yum!