STEM East

Dr. Terri L. Woods, professor emeritus from East Carolina University, will travel to schools in Dare, Currituck, Tyrell, and Hyde Counties to deliver an industry-based classroom lesson for approximately 25 middle school students.

ESS.7.1.2 Use models to explain how the energy of the Sun and Earth’s gravity drive the cycling of water, including changes of state, as it moves through multiple pathways in Earth’s systems and relates to weather patterns on Earth.

ESS.8.2.1 Use models to explain the structure of the hydrosphere including: water distribution on earth, local river basins, estuaries, and water availability.

Putting realistic numbers on the storage of H2O in Earth’s reservoirs and on the rates of movement of H2O between reservoirs is a major step toward understanding the H2O Cycle and allows students to build a model of that cycle. This exercise will help students grasp the relative volumes of the reservoirs, and to visualize the processes that transfer water from one reservoir to another. They have been looking at pictorial representations of the Hydrologic Cycle since about 3rd grade - by middle school they need to start looking at it more quantitatively. The activity also gets them to make measurements and dispense volumes of water and emphasizes the value of drawing a diagram to help make sense out of tables of numbers. The volumes of water held in containers of various sizes will closely represent the relative proportions of the reservoir volumes and will illustrate how important rivers and the atmosphere are for transport, but how unimportant for storage. If appropriate for your students, they can use simple ratios to convert actual values for reservoir volumes to the volumes for their model starting with 1 gallon to represent the volume of seawater. Otherwise, the volumes of water they need to dispense will be provided for them. The relative thickness of the arrows they draw between reservoirs can also be adjusted so they are proportional to the varying rates at which water is transferred between those reservoirs. We’ll end with a brief look at careers in the earth-science and environmental fields.

If you would like to see a more detailed description of the exercise please send me an email at woodst@ecu.edu.