Winter Science for Children - Avalanches

We watched a short animated video clip, about avalanches on BrainPop.com, this morning. It's currently free to view, so click on over, and check it out while you can.

And, we finally had enough new snow to perform our own avalanche experiment. We sat the experiment up, a week or two ago, by cutting a cardboard box in half, from corner to corner to make a mountain peak.



We placed it out on our deck, on a very cold day. Then, we poured water over the box, to form a layer of ice. As I said, it was a very cold day, and the water froze quickly.


The next step (and I'm sorry, but I've completely lost the book, I pulled this experiment from), was to wait for it to snow. Unfortunately, after a light skiff of snow, our weather warmed up, and everything melted. Then, the temperature plummeted, but without snow. We finally got some real snow again, during the night, last night - almost too much, really.


The snow was continuing to fall, and we thought conditions looked hazardous. But, our little Lego skier, disagreed. He was all set to test out the new snow pack..



...when, from out of nowhere, a giant stick rapped against the side of the mountain...


...causing the layer of frozen, and compacted snow, over a less stable, soft layer of snow, on top of the ice, to crack, and avalanche down the mountain. This is called a slab avalanche.


Luckily for our skier, he rode down with the snow, instead of being buried by it, and we were able to rescue him, without much trouble.




It's great to be a homeschooler.