This unit exposes students to some key concepts related to geophysics of inland waters: hydrologic cycle, water storage and movement, inland water ecosystems, water balance. The geophysics of rivers and streams involves applying physics principles to study how water, sediment, and the Earth's subsurface interact.
Students will explore and study the fundamental physics of flow and discover that the behavior of a river is driven by the conversion of gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy, use the principle of conservation of mass to calculate a watershed water budget and learn about the geophysical processes of erosion and sediment transport.
Students will be introduced to new concepts like generation of a streamflow, lifecycle of a river, scaling laws of hydraulic geometry and core geophysical methods - sophisticated tools employed by scientists and engineers to investigate the subsurface structure and composition of our planet without the use of destructive excavation. Students will also learn how to measure a river's speed and calculate discharge - the total volume of water flowing past a point.
Each lesson will be accompanied by a lesson plan. Depending on lesson, there will be examples, problems and applications on computer simulated software that need to be solved by students using concepts presented in the respective lesson.
The unit is intended to be taught in 10th or 11th grade Physical and Environmental Science classes, but it can be used also by middle school 7th and 8th grade Science teachers to expose students to basic physics concepts of velocity, potential and kinetic energy, geology, physical properties of water and states of matter.
The unit will last approximately three weeks.
(Developed for Engineering, grade 8; Physical Science, grade 10; and Environmental Science, grade 11; recommended for General Science, grades 7-8; Physical Science, grade 10; and Environmental Science, grade 11)
