Erosion what exactly is it? That is what I am researching with my friends Colleen and Lisa. We chose this topic because our teacher Mr. Pearce has a sand mountain that is always available to use. He mostly wants us to research with erosion. So we started thinking about what we could do for KIC that is related to the sand mountain and erosion.
After much deliberation the three of us decided to compare a sand mountain to a loam (topsoil) mountain. We decided that all of the variables should be exactly the same. That way it is much easier to compare. We would also put little monopoly houses on the mountain and see if loam or soil would diminish faster.
Erosion is the wearing away of hills or mountains. It is made up of three things to create erosion, wind, water, and gravity. These things all work together to break down hills or mountains. The wearing away does take long on mountains and hills, but not on other things like sandcastles or sand creations you would make at the beach.
To answer our question we first made a sand mountain and a loam mountain. They both were 15 centimeters tall and about 8 inches wide. On our model mountains we made numerous structures on each mountain. Then we poured 5 cups of water on each mountain. The results were interesting to all three of us.
From our research we learned that sand mountains diminish much faster than soil mountains. When we poured the 5 cups of water on the sand mountain it became entirely flat. But we ended up pouring 16 cups of water on the loam mountain and it only washed 5 centimeters down into the tub. Loam definitely holds up much better.
Next year when you go to KIC you might want to change some variables like larger holes in your bucket, what would that do? Or you could do different temperatures of water. Happy KIC!