Imagine your friend gives you a map to get to their house. The distance looks pretty short so you decide to walk there. About halfway through, you realize there is a huge mountain along the way! Now you have to walk a lot farther than you planned. How could your friend have warned you about this on the map? Today we’re going to learn just that, exploring an important subject in math and science called topography!
MATERIALS:
Air dry clay
Dental floss
Marker
Paper
Ruler
TIME ESTIMATED:
20 minutes
DIRECTIONS:
First, get a baseball-sized chunk of clay and shape it into a mountain.
Using the dental floss, make 4 horizontal slices into your mountain so it’s divided into four pieces with equal height. Use the ruler and marker to plan if helpful!
Use your marker to trace each piece of the mountain on a piece of paper. Start with the largest piece and work inwards, placing all the smaller pieces inside the previous one’s trace, near where it is located when we stack them back up.
Now measure the height of the pieces and write it down on the paper.
Finally, give your map a title and add any other decorations you’d like!
Think Like a Scientist!
How tall is your mountain? Can you determine this just by looking at your map?
What does it mean if the edges of two sections (or traces) are closer together? What does it mean if they are farther apart?
HOW DOES IT WORK?
In this activity, we learned how to describe a 3D space using a 2D map! Maps are often used to show the horizontal distance between two places, or the distance we’d have to travel if the land was completely flat. However, contour (or topographic) maps like ours show us how our elevation changes, or the distance we will have to climb up or down something. Topology is the study of a surface’s features and includes mapping surfaces similar to how we mapped our mountain. Each trace we drew is called a contour line. We gave each section an equal height so that now we can count the number of contour lines and determine how much the height changes. For example, if each of the 4 sections is an inch tall, the outer contour line represents an area that is an inch tall while the innermost one is 4 inches. The closer the contour lines are, the faster the height changes in that area– this means the ground will be steeper in comparison to places where contour lines are farther apart. Now we have a way of showing both the vertical and horizontal distances on a map!
Further exploration:
Contour maps are especially helpful for studying the earth’s surface. Geologists study all things related to the Earth, including structures like volcanos and different rock formations. Geologists also use contour maps to search for fossils! Because the earth’s surface has layers made of different types of rock and certain rocks are more likely to have fossils, they look at these maps to decide which layer is the best to search. If they’re looking for marine fossils, they can also use these maps to find places where ancient oceans, lakes, or rivers might have existed.
ANTICIPATED CONCERNS:
The clay will take a few days to dry, so be sure to have a place nearby to store it while it hardens.
Looking for more fun at-home STEM activities for your young scientist? Check out our workbook full of exciting science experiments and empowering activities!
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