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Session 6. Restless Landscapes
Alpine glacier.
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Learning Goals
During this session, you will have an opportunity to build understandings
to help you:
- Describe how sand is formed
- Relate the action of water and ice to the evolution of
landforms
- Model how water occurs underground
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Video Overview
If most mountains are formed in the same way, why do they look so different?
In this session, we explore the forces sculpting the ever-changing
landscape of the Earth. One particular landform — Cape Cod, a peninsula
off Massachusetts — is
the setting for our investigation.
Video Outline
This video opens with a geologic puzzle. Cape Cod is an unusual landform,
as it has no bedrock, and is made almost entirely of sand. How
did this peninsula form and what secrets can it reveal about
the processes that
sculpt the surface of the Earth? We join our geologist host Britt
Argow on Cape Cod to learn about how the Cape formed, and how
understanding this assists us in answering our mountain question.
As we think
about this question, we consider two mountain ranges
that look very different: the Appalachian Mountains in North
America and the Himalayas in Eurasia. We join Dr. Sherilyn Williams
Stroud in the
Appalachian Mountains of western Massachusetts in her search
for evidence in the rocks and clues in the landscape. Our exploration
leads us to focus
on the Earth’s history of ice ages, when continents were forever
changed by the advance and retreat of glaciers.
During the program,
interviews with children uncovers their ideas about where
the sand on the beach comes from, the differences
between “old” and “new” mountains,
and the erosive power of water. We also visit science specialist
Barbara Waters and fifth graders at the Quashnet
Elementary School on Cape Cod,
in Mashpee, Massachusetts. As she facilitates an exploration
of groundwater, we observe the students constructing models depicting
what is under the
surface on Cape Cod and the journey a raindrop takes as it flows
into and through the ground. View the video ==>
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