Show and Tell - The Glacier in our backyard

I've been meaning to upload and share these pictures of our attempt at making a mini-glacier.  It's been a whole week since we did that, and since it's also Show & Tell day, I will make the most of it.  (Show & Tell is hosted by Mary aka CanadaGirl - check out her blog for the other entries and to participate)

We talked about glaciers last week in Science, and tried making our own "mini-glacier" so that we could observe how the movement of the ice can carve and change a landscape.  The glacier is just some small rocks and sand in the bottom of a juice carton, to which we added water and then put in the freezer.  The next day we pulled off the cardboard and had a little "glacier" to play with.





We first took our glacier to a small slope beside the house, but there was too much mulch and grass and not enough dirt to make it work the way we needed.





So later in the day, on our way to gym class, we stopped by the dirt bike track at the greenhouse, and found the PERFECT spot on one of the ramps!







In order to get an idea of how the slowly moving ice in a glacier changes a landscape, we pushed/slid/scraped our glacier down the slope while also pushing it into the dirt itself.  (This worked very well until we discovered that our chosen ramp was also home to a large anthill.  Then we had to beat a hasty retreat!)





In these last two pictures, you may be able to see  the little pile of rocks that built up near the leading edge of our glacier.  That is called the "terminal moraine"  The rocks pushed up alongside the glacier are called the "lateral moraine"  Once we took the glacier off the slope, we were able to see (and maybe you can see in the picture) some lines scraped out in the dirt.  The rocks and debris picked up by a glacier as it moves act like sandpaper on the underside of the glacier and scratches these lines into the ground.  They are called "striations"

This is Moraine Lake near Banff, Alberta.  Guess how it was formed?



Hope you enjoyed our somewhat scholarly Show & Tell today!  Now I need to leave for gym class!