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Following the Sand: The Rock Cycle Along the Larch River

Grade 7 earth science: use weather station data and sand samples from mountain to delta to model the rock cycle and the energy that drives it.

Grade 7ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS2-1

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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 7
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use weather and sand data to explain how granite is weathered, carried and deposited.
Students model where each rock cycle step happens along a river and what energy drives it.
Students argue from evidence that sediment can return to solid rock.

How to use

Read the passage together and have students trace the river from Site 1 to Site 4 before they start. Students can work the tables in pairs, then write the final response on their own.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS2-1

Model the cycling of Earth's materials and the energy that drives the rock cycle.

Preview

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Name Date

Following the Sand: The Rock Cycle Along the Larch River

Use weather records and sand samples to model how rock moves through the rock cycle.

Weathering in the Gray Peaks

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

From Mountain to Delta

1Larch Valley Middle School runs a weather station on its roof, and Mr. Benedikt Halloran's seventh-grade class shares its data with a second station high in the Gray Peaks, where the Larch River begins. The peaks are made of granite, an igneous rock with large crystals of quartz, feldspar and dark mica. Geologists say this granite formed when magma cooled slowly several kilometers underground. Forces inside Earth, powered by its hot interior, are still pushing the peaks up a few millimeters each year, and over millions of years the rock that once covered the granite has been worn away.

2Granite boulders placed by the school entrance 80 years ago still have sharp edges. Up in the peaks, the granite is cracked and crumbling into sand. Water seeps into cracks in the rock, and each time it freezes it expands and pushes the cracks a little wider. Rain and melted snow also react slowly with feldspar and change it into soft clay. Quartz is very hard and hardly changes. Clay is made of tiny flakes that stay mixed in moving water and are carried far out to sea as mud.

3In October the class collected sand at four sites along the river (Table 2). Site 1 is a stream high in the peaks. Site 2 is just below the place where Ash Creek joins the river. Ash Creek drains an old field of dark volcanic rock called basalt; its volcanoes have not erupted for many thousands of years. Site 3 is in the farm lowlands, and Site 4 is on the delta, where the river slows, spreads out and meets the sea. At each site, students sieved the sand, found the average grain size and used a hand lens to sort 200 grains by kind.

4Last year a water well was drilled on the delta. Near the top, the drill brought up loose sand. Below about 500 m, the samples were sandstone: the same kinds of grains, packed tightly and stuck together with mineral cement. The geologist who logged the well explained that the delta slowly sinks as new sediment piles on top, so older layers end up buried deeper and deeper. Rock gets hotter with depth because Earth's interior is hot. Many kilometers down, buried rock can be changed by heat and pressure into metamorphic rock, and in some places it can melt into magma.