The Mill River Water Unit
Lee B. Hotchkiss and Beverly Stern
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Give FeedbackLesson Plan 2: Constructing a River Profile
Objective
To use map scales and contour lines to construct a profile of a river’s height above sea level.
Materials
Maps from Lesson Plan 1 and a piece of string.
Background
A river profile graphs the height of a river against the distance from its mouth. In this lesson we will graph the height of Willow Brook from its source, or head, to its mouth where it enters the Mill River.
Procedure
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1. On the quadrangle maps, locate several places where contour lines cross Willow Brook. Determine the height of the river at each place. Find four or five such points.
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To do this requires locating Willow Brook, following it from its mouth to its head, carefully looking along its length to find where the contour lines cross the river and then determining the altitude at those points. The contour lines are marked in 10 feet intervals. Figure 7 shows an example of how this is done.
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2. Using horizontal and vertical axes as in figure 8, graph the altitude at the mouth of Willow Brook.
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3. Using a string and the maps, measure the distance from the mouth of Willow Brook to the first point. Continuing in this manner, complete the table in figure 9.
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4. Graph each point according to altitude and distance from river mouth.
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5. Connect points.