My topic is erosion (sand and mud mountain). I chose this topic because I loved working on the sand mountain during Inquiry Period. Then I started thinking of things for KIC so that I would be ready.
My partners (Caitlin and Lisa) and I liked working on the mountain. We started thinking what would diminish more or less than sand. We had loam in our classroom so we used that. With the loam came up with this question “When comparing sand and loam which erodes faster with water?” That was our exact question. Our hypothesis was that sand will diminish faster.
There have been many studies on erosion before mine. What is erosion you might be wondering? Well, it is the breaking down of minerals that are forms as hills and mountain. There are two main forces that make the hill or mountain erode. The forces are water and wind. Except for gravity these are the only natural forces that can knock down a hill or mountain. The wearing down of a mountain takes thousands of years. However if you want to see erosion happen fast just go to the beach. Sand (one of the soils that we are using) erodes so fast you can see it fall. Try this when you are at the beach or in your sandbox, build a mountain near the water, when the water comes up watch the mountain erode. Erosion is very dangerous. It can cause landslides.
First we, had a big problem, the dirt would not form a mountain. We all agreed on a solution, we had to add water and make it a mud mountain. Next we started building up the mud mountain and putting the houses on it and domes and all kinds of ways we thought it would keep the homes safe. We did the same to the sand mountain so that it looked the same. Then we found out that the loam barely eroded any way so it didn’t matter. On the other had the sand just diminished automatically with almost no water. Later we started thinking about what the variables were with the two mountains and what was controlled. Our variable was the material we used to make the mountain. The control was that we only used cold water. Finally we recorded our data and marked the pole. The pole famed for the foam mountain went from 20cm to 18cm with 18 cups of water. The sand mountain measured from 20 cm to 0 cm with 6 cups of water.
I don’t think I will ever be done with my research but these are some of the things that we discovered. A sand mountain diminishes a third as fast as the loam mountain. That really surprised my partners and me. We also found out that domes over the homes protect the houses. Also we discovered that when loam eroded it erodes in clumps.
Some things that KIC presenters could do next year with my topic are try8ing different materials. My partners and I, if we had more time, would have mad et he mountains bigger and see if that has a different effect on how much it erodes. A future student could change the question and use hot and cold water and wee what effects are different. To wrap up this whole thing I had lots of fun doing this and I hope future student have as much fun as I did!