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Soak, Seep or Run Off? Tracking Water at Hollis Creek

Grade 6 earth science: soak-in tests, well levels and creek flow data from a cleanup day show how sunlight and gravity move water through a watershed.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS2-4

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What’s included

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

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use infiltration and well data to model how rainwater moves into the ground and back to a creek.
Students explain which water cycle steps are driven by sunlight and which by gravity.

How to use

Before students start, go over how to read the well column (a smaller depth means a higher water table); the match and open response work well as a review of the full water cycle.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS2-4

Model how water cycles through Earth's systems, driven by sunlight and gravity.

Preview

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Name Date

Soak, Seep or Run Off? Tracking Water at Hollis Creek

Use soak-in tests, a well and a creek gauge to model the water cycle.

The soak-in test

Read the passage and Table 1, then answer questions 1–3.

Cleanup Day at Hollis Creek

1Every April, the Hollis Creek Stewards, a club at Brightwater Middle School, spend a Saturday picking up trash along Hollis Creek. The creek begins on a forested hillside, flows past a meadow, a dirt hiking trail and the school's parking lot, and then joins the Tamarack River. The creek and its numbers are made up, but they are based on real streams. This year, club member Desta Haile noticed that the biggest pile of plastic bags and cups lay where a pipe from the parking lot's storm drain empties into the creek.

2Their science teacher, Mr. Corin Abernathy, suggested a soak-in test to see how fast water enters the ground. At four spots, the club pressed a metal ring 15 cm across a few centimeters into the ground, poured in 1 L of water and timed how long it took to soak in. They ran the test three times at each spot and found the average.

3Mr. Abernathy also shared data from a county well and a flow gauge near the creek. Below the ground lies the water table, the top of the zone where the spaces between soil and rock grains are filled with water. The well shows how far below the ground surface the water table is, so a smaller number means the water table is higher. The gauge shows how many liters of creek water flow past each second. Last fall, a 40 mm rainstorm fell on Day 0, and then no rain fell for 30 days.

4On cleanup day, Desta noticed other clues. Early in the morning, fog hung over the creek, and drops of water formed on the cold metal railing of the footbridge. By early afternoon, under a bright sun, the fog was gone and the puddles on the dirt trail had dried up. Mr. Abernathy reminded the club that willows along the bank take up water through their roots and release water vapor from their leaves.