The Fairy-Land of Science · Lecture V, part 1 · Part 5: Lecture V: The two great sculptors, water and ice
13. Water the sculptor: rain and rivers carve the land
Goal: Your child can explain that rain and rivers slowly carry soil away and carve the land, and can make "earth pillars" with a watering can.
You'll need
- A baking tray with a mound of damp sand or garden soil
- A few coins, bottle caps or flat pebbles
- A watering can or a cup with holes poked in the bottom
- A clear jar of muddy water (soil stirred into water)
- Science notebook and pencils
What's in the book
Pages 99 to 105. A sculptor chips a statue out of stone; water and ice carve the hills and valleys the same way. Rain makes earth-pillars in the Tyrol and landslips on the Isle of Wight; little rills join into streams and rivers; and a glass of river water left to stand shows the mud the river carries away.
The lesson, step by step
Hook question
SayWho made the valleys and the hills?
Let your child answer. Buckley's answer is a surprise: mostly water, very slowly.
Read together
Read pages 99 to 101. A sculptor cuts a statue out of a rough block, a chip at a time.
Day by day and year by year, while everything seems to us to remain the same, this industrious sculptor is chipping away, a few grains here, a corner there, a large mass in another place
Try it: make earth pillars
Look at the picture of earth-pillars on page 102. Lay coins and flat pebbles on top of your mound of damp sand. Sprinkle "rain" gently over it from the watering can for a few minutes. The sand washes away except under the coins, leaving little pillars with caps, just like the ones in the picture.
Do this outside or in the bathtub.
Rills to rivers
Read page 104.
Look out some day into the road or the garden where the ground slopes a little, and watch what happens during a shower of rain.
Drops collect in hollows, then run in little rills, which join into bigger streams, and so on to a river and the sea. Buckley says the Thames drains rain from about a seventh of England.
Try it: what the river carries
If you will only take a glass of water out of any river, and let it stand for some hours, you will soon answer this question for yourself.
Shake up the jar of muddy water and set it where it won't be moved. Look again at the end of the lesson and tomorrow: a layer of mud has settled at the bottom. A river carries land away like that, every day.
Tell it back and check
Your child tells back how the earth pillars got their caps. Then ask:
1. Why does Buckley call water a sculptor?
2. Where does a river's water come from?
3. What did the jar of river water show?
What we know now
Buckley says mountains were first pushed up by earthquakes and the Earth shrinking. Today we know the Earth's outer shell is broken into huge plates that move very slowly; where they push together, mountains rise. Then water and ice carve them, as she says.
Afterwards
Notice it this week: after rain, look for little rills of water on a slope, muddy puddles, soil washed onto a sidewalk, or pebbles left standing on a washed patch of dirt.
Tip
Damp (not wet) sand holds its shape best for the earth pillars. Sprinkle gently; a hard pour just washes everything flat.
Answers to the book's problems
1. Because, like a sculptor's chisel, it slowly cuts away the land, a little at a time, and shapes the hills and valleys. 2. From rain (and melting snow) that runs down slopes in little rills that join together. 3. That even clear-looking river water carries mud, which settles out when the water stands still.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.