This weeks post is about the ice caps melting and so this cartoon is quite fitting!
We were to complete an inquiry experience where ice cubes were put into a glass of water and we had to observe until the ice melted. In this experiment the observation made was that there was no water that overflowed from the glass. This I attributed to the ice causing displacement in the water and when the ice melted it filled the displacement so no water could overflow from the glass.
Now if we say this is like the ice caps then "if the ice caps melt" then the sea level would not rise, RIGHT? Well, Not exactly!
Not all the ice on Earth is creating the same displacement like in the glass of water so the sea level would rise as a result. An example would be if all the ice that makes up Antarctica at the South Pole melted then the sea level would rise. The ice in South Pole is thick and does not float like in the North Pole so if it were to melt it would add to the water already there and make the sea level rise. Also with Greenland, if it melted then it would raise sea levels quite a bit based on my interpretation of the activity.
At the North Pole the ice is not as thick and it acts like the ice in the glass so if the Arctic Ocean melted it would not affect the sea levels at all, again this is based on my interpretation of the ice in the glass.
My questions to everyone:
Is my interpretation correct?
Does this activity really mimic real life with the south and north poles?
First I just want to say that I enjoy seeing the pictures you add to your posts.
ReplyDeleteGreat explanation of the poles. I did not know that about the North Pole versus Antarctica. Which in turn caused me to look into it, and read some interesting articles on the topic. Thanks!
Thanks Stacie for the post!!
DeleteThis is very interesting stuff! I went to a professional development recently and the speaker was from NSTA and he was talking about misconceptions about global warming. The facts he gave really opened my eyes and I learned a lot. All the theories bounce back and fourth when I looked up some articles but I found a lot of information I can use in the classroom to clear up many of the misconceptions my students have, which is nice!
Interesting evidence from your experiment as I receieved different results. With my experiment, I placed a large clump of ice cubes in a bowl and then filled the bowl to the rim with water. Melting rate exceeded evaporation rate and caused some (a little) water to overflow. Maybe, I caused the spillage by being uncareful.
ReplyDeleteTruett,
DeleteThanks for your post!! It could have also been condensation but maybe my results were off :) There is always human error in any investigation! When I first completed it I thought I did something wrong because it did not support my hypothesis, but then when I found research to back my results up I just ran with it!
I like the pictures on your blog. How did you do that? I have to look into the articles on the north and south poles, interesting facts.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!! Adding pictures is very easy, all you have to do is find the picture you want to use and copy/paste it into the box you are typing your post into.
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