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Designing the Canyon Makers Exhibit

Use a children's museum investigation to compare how water, wind, ice, and roots weather rock and erode soil.

Grade 4ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned to4-ESS2-1

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
15 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 4
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students distinguish weathering, which breaks rock apart, from erosion, which moves rock or soil.
Students use test results to compare how water, wind, ice, and roots change Earth materials.
Students evaluate fair tests and support claims about weathering and erosion with evidence.

How to use

Read the museum report together and discuss which details are observations or measurements. Then have students use the graph, report, and test descriptions to answer the questions.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

4-ESS2-1

Observe or measure how water, ice, wind or plants weather and erode rock and soil.

Preview

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Name Date

Designing the Canyon Makers Exhibit

Use museum evidence to study how Earth materials change.

Read the museum report

Read the report about the Canyon Makers gallery. Use the report and graph to answer the questions.

The Canyon Makers Gallery Report

At the Children's Museum Canyon Makers gallery, visitors build small landscapes from soil, pebbles, and clay. The museum team wanted to choose a surface for a new miniature canyon exhibit. The team studied how water and wind moved soil. They also recorded observations about ice and plant roots changing rock.

For the water test, the team put 100 grams of the same dry soil into each of three matching trays. The trays had the same slope. A team member poured 250 milliliters of water over each tray in 30 seconds. The surfaces were bare soil, a layer of small pebbles, and a mat of grass roots. The team collected and measured the soil that left each tray.

For the wind test, the team used new matching trays with the same three surfaces. A fan stood the same distance from each tray and ran for 20 seconds. The team measured the soil caught in a container at the end of each tray. The bare tray lost 35 grams, the pebble tray lost 9 grams, and the grass-root tray lost 4 grams.

The team also examined a limestone block with a narrow crack. Water was placed in the crack before the block was cooled until the water froze and then warmed, 12 times. The crack became 3 millimeters wider. A matching block with a dry crack became 1 millimeter wider. No chunks were collected from either block during this test.

Outside the gallery, a stone border had a plant root growing through a crack. In spring, the crack measured 2 millimeters across. In fall, it measured 5 millimeters across. A nearby crack with no root measured 2 millimeters in both seasons. After a rainstorm, the team saw loose soil collected at the low end of a sloping path. The soil was in a new place, but no new cracks were seen in the path stones.