Schoolyard Geology

Schoolyard Geology

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Image From: Matthew d'Alessio, USGS
http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard

Location:	Emerson School Playground, Berkeley, California
About:	If you look carefully at the ground, you can see a bunch of parallel lines. These formed when workers used brooms to distribute the tar of the blacktop evenly over the playground surface. The lines are a permanent record of the abrasion and scraping of the broom.

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U. S. Geological Survey
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/imagebank/search/results.html?ImageID=h0wn0f

Location:	Glacier National Park, Montana
About:	Glacial "striations" on bedrock. Rocks embedded in the bottom of a massive glacier scratched the rock underneath as the glacier moved along. Even though there is no ice present today, these scratched lines are evidence that glaciers were here in the geologic past. We can even tell which direction the glacier was moving by the direction that the lines point!

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Image From: Matthew d'Alessio, USGS
http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard

Location:	Emerson School Playground, Berkeley, California
About:	A close-up of more broom-marks on a concrete walkway.

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Used with permission of Thomas Lowell
Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati
http://tvl1.geo.uc.edu/ice/Image/eropro/675-12.html

Location:	Yale Glacier, in the Chugach Mountains near Prince William Sound, Alaska
About:	A closeup of the scratch marks. Look at how the lines all go the same direction.

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Image From: Matthew d'Alessio, USGS
http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard

About:

The scratch marks on the schoolyard are formed by the process shown on top -- a broom dragged along over wet tar. You can imagine similar scratch marks from a bulldozer pushing rocks.

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Copyright Marli Miller, University of Oregon
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/imagebank/search/results.html?ImageID=hdedwq

Location:	Exit Glacier, Alaska
About:	A massive glacier slides downhill, pushing rocks out of its way like a bulldozer as it goes. When it eventually melts, there will be scratch marks left behind underneath it.

Key Concepts:	Glaciers are made of ice and rocks that get trapped in the ice. Glaciers flow downhill because of gravity. The moving glacier acts a lot like a bulldozer, stripping away layers of rock and moving them off to the side. Rocks embedded in the bottom of the glacier scrape along the newly exposed bedrock and leave behind line-shaped scratch marks. (We call these "glacial striations"). The direction of the scratch marks tells us the direction that the glacier flowed.
Links for further Exploration:	About the science: Background reading for teachers No pictures, but detailed textual description of Glacial features and the importance of glaciers. Glacier Image Library Very detailed, well organized, high quality images of glaciers.
Classroom Activities:	Glacial Scratching [Middle School] Students make mini-glaciers and use them to make scratch-marks on a piece of wood. Glacial melting demonstration [Grades 3-8] Easy, cheap demonstration of what happens when a glacier melts. Web Quest 1 [Middle School] WebQuest 2 [Middle-High School]
Science Standards:	California Gr4, Sc5c. Students know moving water erodes landforms, reshaping the land by taking it away from some places and depositing it as pebbles, sand, silt and mud in other places (weathering, transport, and deposition). (glacier ice is also moving water) Gr6, Sc2. Topography is reshaped by the weathering of rock and soil and by the transportation and deposition of sediment. Gr6, Sc2a. Students know water running downhill is the dominant process in shaping the landscape, including California 's landscape. (glacier ice is also moving water)

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U.S. Department of the Interior \| U.S. Geological Survey URL: http://education.usgs.gov/schoolyard/ Page Contact Information:USGS Education Web Team Page Last Modified: 24 July 2006