Week 12 of 24 • Page 4
Across
3. this happens when heated water breaks into
tiny particles and floats into the air
4. all the water on the Earth
5. all of the air surrounding the Earth
6. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
Vol. 7 Issue 2
Second Quarter
Week 12
Down
1. a tool to measure air pressure and predict
weather
2. this happens when wind, water, ice and heat
break down rocks into smaller pieces
3. this happens when wind, water, or ice moves
rock and sand away
A weekly magazine for young students of science
Word List
evaporation
erosion
weathering
What’s the Force?
What force sculpts the Earth? Draw a line from
the word to the picture of the correct force.
Wind
hydrosphere
barometer
atmosphere
NOAA
How Powerful is Air?
Take your cloud chart outside. What kind of clouds do you see? You
might want to check every day this week.
1. Cirrus clouds are high and feathery looking.
2. Cumulus clouds are white and fluffy. They usually mean fair
weather.
3. Stratus clouds are like low, dark layers or sheets of clouds. They
usually cover the whole sky and mean that rain or snow is coming.
4. Nimbus clouds are dark gray storm clouds and mean that it’s
snowing or raining.
Water
1
4. Nimbus
Ice
3. Stratus
1. Cirrus
4
3
2
2. Cumulus
How Powerful Is Air?
You know tools can help you do what you need
to do, whether you’re taking care of a pet or
doing a science investigation. But it’s especially
important to choose the right tools for the job.
Let’s say you and your friends are going to run
races in your backyard. “I’ll go get a calendar,”
says one of your friends. Huh? You can’t time a
race with a calendar unless it’s a very, very long
race! So, how do you decide which tools are the
right tools for a science investigation?
First, use the common sense test. Timing a
race with a calendar fails that test miserably!
Now what? You can see the kitchen clock
from your backyard, so you decide to use that
instead. That’s not a bad choice, especially if
the clock is not digital and it has a second hand.
Next, ask yourself if there is a tool that would
work better. How about that stopwatch Aunt
Peggy sent you for your birthday? Great idea! A
stopwatch will tell you exactly how long it took
for a person to cross the finish line. Most of
them will time more than one runner. If you take
your time and think it through, you’ll always know
which tools are the right tools.
Even a little bit of air is so powerful that it
can hold up water.
Materials: clear plastic cup, square sheet of paper, small flat board,
and water.
Directions: Fill the cup 3/4 full with water. Place the sheet of
paper over the cup. Place the board over the paper and cup. Carefully
turn the board/paper/cup upside down and place them on the desk.
Carefully lift up the cup with the paper. (Keep the cup level so that the
water doesn’t leak.)
What happened? The water didn’t spill! Air has pressure. The
air is holding up the water and the paper. It’s best if a teacher
demonstrates this lab.
Earth
Sculptures
The Giant Sculpture Called Earth
W
ater does so much more
than just make good
water balloons and a fun pool
party. Water is a powerful
thing. It has been known
to wash away the sides of
mountains. Water carved out
the Grand Canyon. Water can
smooth down giant boulders.
And it can hold up large
battleships with no problem.
Air is also powerful and
shapes the Earth. Moving air
is called wind. The wind of
a hurricane can knock over
trees, homes and telephone
poles for hundreds of miles.
The wind of a tornado has
been known to pick up an
empty school bus and toss it
like a football!
Wind and water shape our
world. Without them, we
wouldn’t have Niagara Falls,
the Grand Canyon or the
Sahara Desert. Thanks to wind
and water, people have cool
places to go on vacation!
Let It Blow
Wind is a powerful force that shapes the
Earth. But wind is also starting to shape the
way we use energy.
People have almost always used wind as
a source of energy. The ancient Egyptians
used wind to sail their ships on the Nile
River. The ancient Persians built windmills
to grind their grain. Since then, people
in many different countries have used
windmills to pump water and grind grain.
Today wind is the fastest growing source
of electricity in the world. How does this
work? Windmills catch breezes, their blades
spin, and energy is created. The energy can
be changed into electricity.
Here’s a fun way to learn about the
Wind farms are becoming more popular in the
United States.
power of wind. Each group will need an
electric fan and some items like feathers,
strips of paper, cotton balls, tissues, leaves,
etc. You’ll also need something to measure
how far each item is blown. Be careful
around the fans—keep your fingers away
from the spinning blades.
Before you begin, ask each person in
the group to predict which item will blow
the farthest. Write the predictions in your
science journal or on a piece of paper.
Set the fan on a table or desk and turn
it on. Stand to the side of the fan and drop
one item in front of it. When the item stops
moving, measure how far it traveled. Write
down the distance for each item. If your fan
has different speeds, try this again using a
higher or lower speed on the fan.
Week 12 of 24 • Page 2
Earth Sculptures
W
ind, water, ice and heat from the sun break down rocks
into smaller pieces. This is called weathering. When
those pieces get washed and blown away, like when bits
of a beach wash away in a storm, that is called erosion. Learn how
powerful wind, water and ice can be.
falls down in the form of
snow, ice or rain. Rain
flows down mountain
streams into rivers, then
into lakes, then into
oceans, back where it
started. This is called
the water cycle.
Ocean waves can be
very powerful. Storms
can cause the waves to
rise higher than usual. The
rise of water during a storm is called a storm surge. A storm surge
can suck the sand out from under homes, making them fall into the
water.
Floods can happen quickly. They are the result of an abundance
of rain that fills up lakes, rivers and low areas where water collects.
Week 12 of 24 • Page 3
How Powerful Is Ice?
Almost nothing can stop ice from expanding. This
experiment will take two days to demonstrate, but is
very easy. Soak pieces of sandstone (from a hardware
store) in water overnight. Put the sandstone in
sealable bags and freeze them the next night. What
happened? The sandstone absorbed the water. Then,
when the water froze, it expanded and cracked the
rock. This is one way rocks break apart into sand.
Ice
A glacier is a giant sheet of ice that forms high up in the
mountains or in the cold parts of the Earth. Glaciers are huge.
Some are miles thick! They can carry giant rocks with them for
miles over thousands of years. Glaciers can crack open parts of
the Earth, make lakes and push open large valleys. When glaciers
reach the ocean, they break off into icebergs.
Wind
Wind is a powerful force. A tornado can blow 300 miles per
hour. But even small constant winds can shape the Earth.
Wind is made of gases in the air. All the gases that we breathe
move about in what we call the atmosphere. Wave your hands—
they’re in the atmosphere! There is a great deal of air above us. You
can feel it when the wind blows. All that air presses down on us.
Wind can lift sand and rocks and blow them against larger
rocks or mountainsides. This can wear down large rocks and
mountainsides into sand. Sand dunes are an example of wind
sculpting the Earth.
Water Erosion
Water is a powerful force at work. It erodes and
changes how the Earth looks. Let’s see the effects
of water erosion.
What You Need
• three clear plastic cups
• some M&M pieces (plain, without peanuts)
• water
Directions
1. Put some M&Ms in each cup. Fill the first and
second cups halfway with water. Don’t put water in
the third cup.
2. Put the cups on the table.
3. Every five minutes, swirl the candy in the first
cup. Be careful not to spill any water or candy.
4. Don’t disturb the second and third cups.
After a couple of hours, answer these questions.
Is the candy in the second cup dissolving? How about
the third cup? Why is the candy in the first cup
dissolving faster than the candy in the second cup?
When you swirl the cup around, the water
molecules bump into the candy molecules and knock
them off, so it dissolves faster.
How have water and wind changed the land where
you live?
Water
Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Most
of the water is very salty. The water on the Earth is called the
hydrosphere.
Water travels all over the place. When the water in lakes and
oceans and on the ground gets heated, it breaks into tiny particles
and floats into the air. This is called evaporation. Evaporated water
may join a large cloud. When the cloud gets full of water, the water
Red Sky at Night, Sailor’s Delight?
If a fishing boat is caught in a storm at sea, it could
sink. So, over thousands of years, fishers learned how to
“read” the sky. They even came up with sayings like “Red
sky at night is a sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning is a
sailor’s warning.” This meant that if the sunset made the sky
red, then there was a good chance of clear skies the next
morning. But if the sunrise was red and cloudy, then the
weather might be stormy.
Sailors and fishers today still watch
the sky for signs of storms. But they
also count on weather information
from the NOAA (National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration). NOAA has
satellites that watch weather from
outer space. They can see a storm
coming and warn sailors to stay on shore
until it passes.
Watch the sky each morning and night
and look at the sky color and clouds.
Then see if good or bad weather comes
in the next day. Is the saying correct?
Why do
tornadoes spin?
A tornado is a rotating column of air “hanging” from a
thunderstorm cloud to the ground.
Roll a clump of clay or play-dough back
and forth in the palm of your hands.
Soon a column of clay forms.
That’s the way a column of air
forms. A body of air (or wind)
is moving in one direction, and
another body of air goes in a
different direction. So, the air
spins. The column of air doesn’t
spin back and forth like the clay.
Instead, it spins in one direction.
That spinning column of air is
called a vortex.
Tornadoes may be invisible
until they pick up dust and other
things—even cows and cars.
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Barometer
Do you remember when we learned that air is
matter? It is a gas. Because air takes up space, it
presses against everything around it—even us, but we
usually can’t feel it.
A barometer is a tool that measures air pressure.
The air pressure changes with the weather. So a
barometer can help us predict what the weather will
be like. If the barometer shows the air pressure
is high, that usually means clear skies. If the air
pressure is low, that usually means that a storm is
coming.
Why? If air pressure is low (that means the air
is not heavy or
dense), then that
means the air is
rising. As the air
rises, it cools.
As the air cools,
water drops or
ice crystals form,
which eventually
fall. Voila! You have
a storm.
Louis Agassiz
(1807–1873)
Louis Agassiz loved to study
nature. Louis wondered about
glaciers. Glaciers are giant
sheets of ice that can carve
huge paths on the Earth.
Some glaciers are miles
thick. There are glaciers
in the northern United
States, Canada and other
cold parts of the world.
Louis came up with the
theory of the Ice Age. He
believed that long ago
most of the Earth was
covered with ice. He was
right! For a long time,
glaciers sculpted much
of the Earth. This is
why he is called “The
Father of the Ice
Age.”